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POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS 



LEGISLATIVE, DIPLOMATIC, AND POPULAR 



1856-1886 



JAMES G. BLAINE 



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NORWICH, CONN. 
THE HENRY BILL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1887 






Copyright, 1887, 
By JAMES G. BLAINE. 



All rights rese^'vecl. 
SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. 



ELECTKOTYPED AND PRINTED 

BY KAND AVERY COMPANY, 

BOSTON. 



CONTENTS. 



POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Nomination of Frkmoxt fok President 

The National Issues of 18G0 

Confiscation of Eebel Pkopekty .... 

Speech of Mr. Blaine accepting his First Nomination to 

Congress 

Can the Country sustain the Expense of the War, and pay 

THE Debt avhich it will involve ? 

Presidential Election of 18G4. — Lincoln against McClellan 
Futility of attempting to equalize Gold, Silver, and Papei 

Money by Legislation 

New Basis of Eepresentation in Congress .... 
The Fourteenth Amendment as a Basis of Reconstruction 
Shall the Late Rebels avield the Entire Civil Power of the 

South ? 

National Honor in the Payment of the National Debt 

Taxation of Ignited States Bonds 

Grant and Seymour compared 

Mr. Burlingame as an Orator 

The Nomination of Horace Greeley as a Presidential Can 

DIDATE 

Mr. Blaine's Seventh and Last Nomination as Representative 

IN Congress fiwm the Kennebec District .... 

Municipal Debt in the United States 

The Democratic Party and the Constitutional Amendments 
Sii^LL Jefferson Davis be restored to Full Citizenship? 
* Rejiunetizavion of Silver 
The Halifax Award .... 
Trade with South America . 
The PRociRESS of the North-West 
Southern Abuse of Elective Franchise 
Speech of Mr. Blaine at the Dinner of the New England 

Society of New York, Dec. 2o, 1878 



PAGE 

1 

9 

18 

37 

40 

48 

55 
58 
CI 

72 
77 
89 
95 
104 

109 

119 
125 

138 
150 
1G3 
17(3 
186 
194 
201 

210 



VI 



CONTEXTS. 



(4,- 



Chixese Immigratiox to the Pacific Slope 

Chinese Im.migkatio.v 

Chinese Immigkation 

False Issle kaiseu by the Democratic Party 

National Soyereignty against State Sovereignty. —Position 

OF Mr. Werster 

Eulogy of Senator Chandler .... 

Ought the Negro to be Disfranchised? Ought he to have 

been Enfranchised? 

Encouragement to American Ship-Building and the Kevivai 

OF American Commerce on the Ocean 



PAGE 

216 
232 
236 
246 

260 

272 

278 
300 



DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

Clayton-Bulweu Treaty and Interoceanic Canal 

ArbitraPvY Arrests in Ireland 

Oppression of the Hebrews in Russia .... 
Dispatches concerning the War between Peru, Chili, 

Bolivia 

Special Mission to Chili, Peru, and Bolivia . 
Our Friendly Relations with Mexico .... 
The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom . 
Assassination of Alexander IH., Emperor of Russia . 
*^Baron Steuben's Family at Yorktown .... 
France proposes Joint Intervention in South America in War 
Proposed Peace Congress of American States 



311 
336 
340 

343 

364 



388 
307 
399 
401 
403 



POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Withdrawal of Invitations to a Peace Congress . . . 407 
'^'Foreign Policy of the Garfield Administration . . . .411 
Mr. Blaine's Letter accepting the Hepublican Nomination 

FOR the Presidency in 1884 420 

Speeches before the People during the Phesidential Canvass 

OF 1884 435 

After the Presidential Election of 1884 466 

Memorial Services in Honor of General Grant in August.^, 

Maine, Aug. 8, 1885 472 

The Irish Question 477 

Political Issues in 1886 486 

Memorial Address 503 



The Political Discussions included in this volume are taken from 
a large number of the same general character, extending through 
many years. The principle of selection for publication has been to 
present those that i-elate to political events of lasting importance ; 
or those that touch upon practical questions still engaging in various 
degrees the attention of the American people. 

The Diplomatic Correspondence refers only to those questions still 
in dispute, — questions which even upon a larger field than that of 
our own political contests may affect the future interests and influ- 
ence of the United States. 

iil 



POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



NOMINATION OF FREMONT FOR PRESIDENT. 



[Speech delivered by Mr. Blaine at a Eepublican meeting in Litchfield, 
Maine, June 28, 1856.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — The Republican party is a new political 
organization. It is not yet two years old. Its first small meet- 
ings were held late in the summer of 1854, when the name was 
adopted, and the party organized on the one great principle of 
resisting the spread of slavery into the Territories of the United 
States. The new party had its origin in the deep and abiding 
conviction on the part of the opponents of slavery that the 
propagandists of the South cannot be trusted upon any adjust- 
ment or upon any agreement. Pressed hard by opposition, to- 
day, they will agree to a compromise ; and, to-morrow, if they 
see opportunity for fresh aggression, they will disregard it and 
trample upon it. The two great compromises on the subject 
of slavery were that which established the geographical line of 
36° 30' in the year 1820, known as the Missouri Compromise, 
and that which was enacted thirty years later and is known 
as the Compromise of 1850. At both junctures, the potent 
agency that wrought on behalf of the South was the fear that 
the Union might be dissolved. That was the threat of Southern 
leaders ; it was the conclusive argument that induced Northern 
men to yield. But in 1854 the Missouri Compromise was re- 
pealed, and, with it, the Compromise of 1850 was j)ut under 
foot. The division line (by which it was agreed that freedom 
should have sway north of it and slavery should permissively 
exist south of it) was destroyed, after thirty-four j^ears of honor- 
able observance on both sides. 

1 



2 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

The destriietioii of the Whig party was one of the immedi- 
ate results of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, because; 
the Northern Whigs were largely anti-slavery in feeling, and 
could not be held in co-operation with a party whose Southern 
members had broken faith in their zeal for the spread of slavery. 
A large number of Northern Democrats were equally resolved 
not to stand by their old party. These two great bodies, join- 
ing with the old Free-soil and Liberty party, are the elements 
that have coalesced and become unified within the ranks of 
the Republican party. I think it is not boastful to say that 
in the character of the men who lead this party and of the vast 
number who compose it, that in its growth, in its zeal, in its 
unselfish devotion to a single great issue, it is unprecedented, if 
not phenomenal. It has grown so rapidly that it is in the 
National field with full strength and with organization — coura- 
geous enough to enter the fight, with the conscience and the 
nerve to accept defeat and prepare for another battle. Its 
members are not to be put down by the cry of sectionalism, or 
frightened by the threat of disunion. Certainly no member of 
the Republican party underrates the value of the Union of the 
States, or would hesitate at any sacrifice to preserve it, except 
the sacrifice of honor, or the sacrifice of that freedom which 
the Union was established to preserve. But we do not con- 
template the dissolution of the Union as a possibility; and 
certainly no sane man believes that a great body of States, 
bound together in mutual interest and cemented by a thousand 
ties, can be torn asunder so readily and so easily as the flippant 
threats of the Southern extremists would imply. 

The Republican party, therefore, will march forward in the 
line of duty, and will try to engraft its principles upon the gov- 
ernment of the country. They have no purpose to interfere 
with slavery in the States; they have no purpose to inter- 
fere with slavery anywhere, except to the extent that Thomas 
Jefferson and the Fathers of the Republic interfered with it 
when they excluded it from free territory. If, indirectly, that 
policy interferes wnth slavery in the States, we are not respon- 
sible. Certainly the great evil of slavery, wherever it exists, is 
not to be countenanced and upheld by subjecting other com- 
munities and other territory to a like curse. I have no doubt 



NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF ISoG. 3 

that the great majority of the Republican party would interfere 
with slavery in the States, if they considered that they had the 
Constitutional right to do so ; but they will not violate their 
oaths to observe the Constitution, and they will not strain their 
consciences to make that seem right which the plain letter of 
the law forbids. But they believe that their right to exclude 
slavery from the free Territories is just as clear as their inability 
to interfere with it in the States ; and on that single point, great 
and far-reaching in its effects, we challenge the Democratic 
party of the South and of the Nortli to a contest for the govern- 
ment of the country. 

The first National Convention of the Republican party has 
lately been held in Philadelphia, and this Congressional Dis- 
trict did me the honor to send me as one of its delegates to 
that remarkable assemblage. I am sure that I shall be ex- 
pected by you, as my constituents, to make some report of what 
was said and done there, and especially what was done by 
the Maine delegation. The daily journals have given you the 
details of the proceedings, and I content myself with some 
general observations on the character of the Convention — its 
personal character, if I may use the phrase. In the various 
delegations that composed the Convention, in the sacred cause 
which it assembled to uphold, and in the work which it accom- 
plished, it will fairly rank as one of the most significant and 
important political conventions ever held in the United States. 
A marked feature was the large proportion of young men 
among its members, and in the general tendency to select that 
class I can find the only cause for conferring upon me the 
distinction of membership in such a body. 

It was scarcely to be expected that such an assemblage of 
men, many of them marked by individuality, and all of them 
possessing independence of thought and action, should, without 
some difference of view, reach a general unanimity of con- 
clusion. The drift of events for some months before the Con- 
vention met was towards the nomination of Colonel Fremont 
for the Presidency, and I believe he received a unanimous 
vote of the delegates from every State in New England, ex- 
cept Maine. Among our delegates there was a friendly and 
sincere difference of view, which separated us into nearly equal 



4 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

parts, — thirteen preferring Colonel Fremont, and eleven giving 
their votes on the first or informal ballot for Judge McLean of 
Ohio. 1 was one of the eleven. I did not act from any spirit 
of opposition to Colonel Fremont. My preference for Judge 
McLean was in large degree based upon admiration of his high 
character, but partly upon an inherited friendship for liim, 
partly from a kinship of feeling with his conservatism, and 
partly, I suppose, because the Whig instincts which I sliare 
with the great majority of this district turned me towards 
one who had so long been among the trusted statesmen and 
soundest advisers of that party. But it would be unfair to say 
that Whig or anti-Whig traditions had nuu^h to do with the 
division, for the two most eminent members of our delegation, 
Ex-Governor Edward Kent and Ex-Governor Anson P. Morrill, 
the one formerly an earnest Whig and the other a radical 
Democrat, united in favor of nominating Judge McLean. 

The sense of the Convention was, however, strongly in favor 
of taking Colonel Fremont, the first ballot showing 359 votes 
in his favor, to 100 votes for Judge McLean. The nomination 
was immediately declared to be unanimous, and was cheered as 
heartily by those who had supported Judge McLean as by those 
who had been the original advocates of Colonel Fremont's nomi- 
nation. The Presidential candidate being thus selected from the 
Pacific coast, it was at once regarded as probable that the second 
place on the ticket would be given to an Atlantic State, though 
the Mississippi Valley contended for it. A concentration was 
rapidly formed upon Mr. Dayton, long eminent as a Senator 
from New Jersey, though on the first ballot, as you already 
know, he did not receive a majority, — a considerable number 
of votes being given to diiferent candidates. The leading com- 
petitor, who received a hundred and ten votes, was Abraham 
Lincoln of Illincns, who, ten years ago, served a single term in 
Congress, and who has lately gained reputation beyond the 
lines of his own State by the ability with which he has re- 
viewed Senator Douglas for his course in securing the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise. Some of the Illinois delegates 
gave pledges, privately, that if Lincoln were nominated for 
Vice-President the ticket would receive the electoral vote of 
Illinois, — thus defeating Douglas in his own State. But the 



THREE POLITICAL PARTIES. 5 

tendency towards an Eastern candidate was too strong to be 
arrested. 

The three jmrties are now before the country with their 
candidates, and there is something remarkable in the political 
antecedents of the gentlemen on each ticket. Colonel Fremont, 
who is now adopted by the Republican party, which includes 
the old Abolitionists, the anti-slavery Democrats and the great 
majority of the Whigs of the North, is a native of South 
Carolina, reared in the doctrines of Calhoun, called to the 
civil service under President Jackson, appointed to the army 
by President Van Buren, and married to a daughter of Colonel 
Benton, With Southern birth and all these Democratic tradi- 
tions and connections, it is one of those singular revolutions, 
not altogether infrequent in American political life, that makes 
him the candidate of the anti-slavery party of the North. 

Mr. Buchanan, who is the Democratic candidate, was one of 
the most pronounced of the old Federalists, and has hitherto 
found his earlier record a stumbling-block to his political 
advancement. Since he joined the Democratic party he has 
continually striven to efface his record as a Federalist and espe- 
cially the memory of his hostility to the Administration of Mr. 
Madison. He has offered among other disproofs, the fact that 
in the war of 1812 he joined a military company and marched 
to the relief of Baltimore when menaced by British invaders. 
The hostile force had left before he arrived. This attempt at 
establishing a military record was much impaired by a humor- 
ous interruption by Mr. Clay upon a certain occasion in the 
Senate, when he asked Mr. Buchanan whether in the war of 
1812 the British had retired from Baltimore because he was 
advancing upon it, or whether he had advanced upon Baltimore 
because he knew the British had retired ? — Mr. Breckinridge, 
his associate, comes from an old Whig family long resident in 
Kentucky, his father and grandfather both being supporters of 
Mr. Clay. So that the Democratic ticket really contains no 
candidate that was originally Democratic. 

The American party, as the Know-Nothings now style them- 
selves, have selected Mr. Fillmore, placed him upon a pro-slavery 
platform, and associated with him on the ticket A. J. Donelson 
of Tennessee, the adopted nephew of General Jackson and the 



6 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

inheritor d" his principles. Mr. FiHmore was originally an 
anti-slavery Wiiig, a member of the anti-masonic party, and 
entered Ct)ngress midway in General eJackson's administration, 
towards which lie alwa3^s held the position of an implacable 
opponent. Throughout his Congressional career he was dis- 
tinguished by his continual resistance to the advances of the 
slave-power, being through all these years fully abreast with 
Mr. Seward, who at that time represented the party at home. 
When he succeeded to the Presidency, after General Taylor's 
death, six years ago, Mr. Fillmore went over to the South, 
favored the Compromise bills and approved the Fugitive-slave 
Law, the most cruel enactment that ever was placed upon the 
statute-book of the United States. It is this which has asso- 
ciated him with an old Southern Democrat closely identified 
with General Jackson, and has made him the candidate of the 
Southern men Avho cannot su})port Mr. Buchanan. 

It is a singular combination that gives to each ])arty in the 
contest a candidate whose early associations and whose early 
political views were in absolute conflict with the early views 
and associations of the men who are now supporting him. But 
the advantage which the Republican party has in this regard is 
that Colonel Fremont, in his early life, had no political record 
of any kind, but was engaged as an engineer, a soldier, a pioneer 
and an explorer until the opening of the great era which led to 
our acquisitions of territory from Mexico. He came from Cal- 
ifornia as a senator six years ago, associated with one of the 
extremest Southern Democrats, — William M. Gwiu, — but he 
came as the representative of a free State not yet infected by 
the presence of a slave, — a free State that broke the equality 
of representation in the Senate between North and South which 
tlie Southern Democrats, under Mr. Calhoun's lead, had 
demanded as the protection of the institution of Slavery. As 
long as the South could hold half of the Senate, no anti-slavery 
measure could be enacted. That spell was broken by the 
admission of California ; and but for Fremont's relationship to 
Benton and the interest which the distinguished Missouri sena- 
tor was thereby induced to take in the fate of California, the 
Golden State might not have been able to come in, without ruin- 
ous exactions and conditions imi)osed by the South. But for 



A SINGLE ISSUE PRESENTED. 7 

the action of Colonel Benton the Democratic part}^ would have 
been practically consolidated against the admission of California 
to the Union until a slave State could be organized to offset 
her influence on all questions affecting the interests of the 
South. His course will be adjudged as eminently wise and 
patriotic whatever motive may have originally inspired it. But 
it cost him his standing and influence in the Democratic party 
and ended his senatorial life. He served in the last Congress 
as representative from the St. Louis district, and soon found 
himself again in rank antagonism with his old party in its lead- 
ing measure, — the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 

Fr(^mont was the herald, therefore, of a new political era in 
the nation ; and without realizing it himself he became the 
embodiment of the Republican policy which declared that the 
___^ational Territories shall be kept free from the curse of slavery. 
The battle between free institutions and slave institutions is 
now in actual progress in the Territory of Kansas, and will be 
fought there to the bitter end. Mr. Buchanan represents the 
pro-slavery side of that contest, Colonel Fremont represents 
the anti-slavery side, while Mr. Fillmore, evading a declaration 
on the question, is, so far as he has political strength, decisively 
and most effectively on the side of the South. 

This is not the fight of the old Abolitionists, though being 
practical and sensible men those radical disciples of Freedom 
are joining heart and hand with the supporters of Fremont. 
As I have already intimated the Republican party is not pledged 
to the removal of slavery from the District of Columbia, nor to 
the destruction of the interstate slave-trade, nor even to the 
repeal of that most infamous statute, the Fugitive-slave Law. 
The party is pledged simply and only to the policy of prohibit- 
ing the existence of slavery in all the Territories of the United 
States. In fact, the platform adopted by the Philadelphia Con- 
vention is confined to the one issue of freedom for the Terri- 
tories, with a resolution added favoring the construction of the 
Pacific Railroad and another favoring liberal appropriations for 
the improvement of rivers and harbors. The issue, therefore, 
could not be more direct or more specific. Rarely, indeed, has 
it happened, in the complicated character of jDolitical questions, 
that any party was ever able to enter upon a popular canvass 



8 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

M'iili ail issue so plain, so well defined, so difficult to evade and 
so certain to enlist intelligent popular interest. 

The Republicans of Maine are resolved to join their brethren 
of other States in presenting the one great issue, separated from 
and unembarrassed by all other personal, political or moral con- 
siderations. The Democrats, who now hold the political power 
of the State for the first year since 1851-52, have repealed the 
Prohibitory Law and substituted a License Law. They have 
expected that such an issue thrown in the face of the Republi- 
cans, three-fourths of whom are Prohibitionists, might create 
division and confusion in their ranks at this time. The leadinQ- 
Prohibitionists, with Anson P. Morrill and Neal Dow at their 
head, are willing and in fact desirous of postponing the issue, so 
that we can have a clearly defined fight on National questions 
this year and a clean fight on Prohibition next year. Tlie 
Democratic policy, therefore, though designed for distraction, 
will fail to discourage the Republican host, but will, rather, 
nerve it to the outlay of its full and combined strength. 

The Republican State Convention, which meets in a few 
days, will settle all these issues, and then we shall march for- 
ward in solid column to the conquest of the State. The unan- 
imous desire of the party is that Hannibal Hamlin shall be 
selected as our standard-bearer ; and though Mr. Hamlin is 
reluctant to leav^ the Senate to become Governor, he must 
remember that the same power which can make him Governor 
can send him back to the Senate. Let us make the demand 
upon him unanimous and so imposing that he cannot decline 
our request. To that end let me urge that all the towns in 
Kennebec be represented at Portland with full delegations, on 
the 8th of next month. There is work to be done this year, 
and the old Whig county of Kennebec must do her full share. 
Maine will not lag behind in this contest for free territory, 
and the first duty in hand is to destroy the present Democratic 
supremacy in the State. 



ADVENT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



THE NATIONAL ISSUES OF 1860. 



[Extract from a speech delivered by Mr. Blaine before a Republican mass 
meeting at Farmington, Maine, July 4, 1860, at which Honorable Israel Wash- 
burn, Republican candidate for Governor, formally opened the campaign.] 

I SINCERELY thank you, Mr. Chairman and Republicans of 
Franklin County, for the honor you have conferred upon me by 
your invitation to join our distinguished candidate for Governor 
in formally opening the State and Presidential campaigns in 
Maine. We have had the great pleasure of hearing Mr. Wash- 
burn, and I am sure we all feel that in his eloquent and ex- 
haustive speech on the leading National issue he has left little 
for other speakers to say. If his speech made one impression 
upon my mind stronger than any other, it was that we do a 
wrong to our State and to the Nation to withdraw him from 
Congress to make him Governor of the State, when his services 
in the House of Representatives had so fully ripened him for 
the closing battles of that conflict for free territory, in wliich, 
for the past ten years, he has borne so conspicuous and so hon- 
orable a part. But it is now too late to change, and we must 
content ourselves with the belief that if we lose a brilliant 
Representative in Congress we shall secure an equally brilliant 
Governor, and that Mr. Rice, who is nominated as his successor 
in the National field, will faithfully uphold the principles which 
Mr. Washburn's long career has so fitly illustrated. 

It is interesting and important for us, at the initial point of 
the National campaign, to see how the events of four years 
have deepened and broadened the issue upon which the Republi- 
can party was organized, and how that party, growing and 
strengthening in all the States of the North, has enlarged the 
creed of principles which first constituted its political faith. 
The vote for Fremont, in 1856, though the party had been hastily 



10 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

summoned and was imperfectly organized, was yet so large as 
to give a wholesome fright to the pro-slavery leaders of tlie 
South. Mr. Buchanan carried his own State by only two thou- 
sand votes in the October election, and if the majority had been 
two thousand the other way the coalition ticket of Frdmont 
and Fillmore electors would probably have been chosen. In 
that event the election would have been thrown into the House 
of Kepresentatives, and either ]\lr. Buchanan or jNIr. Fillmore 
would have been chosen President through the same process 
that gave John Quincy Adams the Executive Chair in 1825. 
Though it might not have deprived the Democracy of the Chief 
Magistracy, it would have been more than equivalent to an ordi- 
nary defeat between parties. " Even as it resulted, the gathered 
hosts of the free North so alarmed the leaders of Southern 
opinion that something was imi)eratively demanded to strength- 
en their position. 

The Nation did not wait long to learn the policy and purpose 
of the pro-slavery leaders. The Republicans had already once 
gained control of the popular branch of Congress, and the 
Democracy were afraid that the same result might be repeated. 
That implied the possibility of defeat at the polls in a Presi- 
dential election ; and with the Executive and Legislative de- 
partments of the Government against them, they feared for the 
fate of slavery. In this dilemma they had recourse to the 
National Judiciary to strengthen them in their position. So 
assured were they that a decision of great value to the pro-slavery 
interest was impending, that Mr. Buchanan ventured to refer 
to it in his Inaugural Address as "soon to be announced." 
People did not realize at the time the gross impropriety of this 
reference, but its full measure was seen when, not long after, 
the Dred Scott decision was pronounced by the Supreme Court. 
This decision, which primarily related to the freedom of a sin- 
gle man (whose name the case bears), was so broadened by the 
Court, in its obiter dicta, as to take in all existing political dis- 
putes on the slavery question. The Missouri Compromise of 
1820 was declared to have been unconstitutional, and its flagi- 
tious repeal in 1854 was thus upheld as a patriotic duty on the 
part of Congress. As far as a judicial edict could do it, slavery 
was strengthened everywhere by that decision, the whole 



THE DRED SCOTT DECISION. 11 

National domain was opened to its ingress, and no power was 
left, either among the settlers in the Territories or in the Con- 
gress of the United States, to exclude it. The belief with 
many who are entitled to know, is that the "• opinions " of the 
Court which take in matter beyond the record of the case, 
would never have been delivered had not the supposed polit- 
ical necessities of the South demanded this judicial declaration 
of the extreme doctrine of Mr. Calhoun. 

The Southern men have found, however, that they reckoned 
without their host when they supposed that the people of the 
United States, on political questions of this character, would give 
up a contest that involves freedom for a continent, on the mere 
sideway opinions of five pro-slavery judges. The contest goes 
on ; and it has been deepened by the atrocious efforts to compel 
Kansas to enter the Union under the fraudulent constitution 
made at Lecompton, against the will and the wish of her people. 
Neither the abuse of power by the President nor the perversion 
of justice by the Supreme Court can call a halt in this battle 
for free territory. It is destined to go forward ; and the ele- 
ments which the pro-slavery leaders have relied upon as settling 
it are but acting as incentives to greater energy and more deter- 
mined purpose on the part of the freemen of the Northern 
States. The cry of " sectionalism," which is part of the cam- 
paign thunder of the Democratic party, has lost its force ; for 
the people measure its meaning and are ready, in their own 
phrase, to unite in defense of freedom when Southern men 
combine in defense of slavery. 

In the election of 1856 the opponents of the Democratic 
party were divided. I do not say that, even had they been 
united, they could have triumphed at that time. But this year, 
in the good Providence of God, the division comes in the 
Democratic party itself; and we can felicitate ourselves that 
the strife between Mr. Douglas and Mr. Breckinridge will in all 
probability give the election to the Republicans of the United 
States, and that Abraham Lincoln, if he lives, will be the next 
President. I do not in this contest reckon Mr. Bell of Ten- 
nessee (who, with Mr. Edward Everett for Vice-President, is 
running as the representative of the old Whig remnant) as of 
any special force. We have no occasion to discuss him or his 



12 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

platform, and we can safely endure the little diversion wliicli, 
through old Whig influences, he may make from the Republican 
standard in the North, in consideration of the additional con- 
fusion he will bring to the Democratic party in the South. It 
is in fact probable that upon the whole the Republicans will 
gain by the candidacy of Bell and Everett, because the majority 
of their Northern sui:)porters, if the ticket Avere withdrawn, 
would cast their votes directly for Mr. Douglas. 

Nor should Ave listen for a single moment to those Demo- 
crats Avho for the first time in their lives find themselves in a 
(piarrel Avith the pro-slavery chieftains, and are asking popular 
support for Douglas as the leader of the real revolt against the 
dangerous element of the South. If there Avere no other argu- 
nient against that course, its utter impracticability Avould be 
conclusive. If the Douglas men are in earnest and wish to 
smite the dangerous and aggressive element A\diich is massing 
itself under the lead of Breckinridge for pro-slavery victory, or 
for disunion in the event of failure, they should unite in suj)- 
port of Mr. Lincoln. Either Mr. Lincoln Avill be chosen, or the 
election Avill be throAvn into the House of Representati\^es ; and 
no man who measures the Avorking of political forces to-day can 
vicAv that result Avith any feeling other than one of dread. 
Certainly no Northern man ought to cast his vote in a Avay tliat 
admits of the possibility of such a raffle for the l-*rcsidency as 
Avould sacrifice all princi})le and iuA^olve the danger that may 
be connected with a contest of that character. 

If the Republicans of Maine need any further stimulus to 
rally for Lincoln Avith even more enthusiasm than they rallied 
for Frdmont, four years ago, it A\"ill be found in the fact that 
our own distinguished fellow-citizen, Hannibal Hamlin, is the 
candidate for Vice-President. In these great National uprisings 
for freedom, it seems to be Mr. Hamlin's fortune to hold promi- 
nent place and Avield prominent influence. It Avas his great 
victory as candidate for Governor four 3^ears ago, that gave 
impulse to the popular Avave for Fremont, and it is his presence 
and his influence to-day Avhich, Avith that of our distinguished 
candidate for GoA^ernor, Avill give increased volume and increased 
force to the voice of Maine in September. 

There is another great step forward Avhich the Republican 



FREE TRADE EXPERIMENT OF 1846-1861. 13 

party has taken in its National platform of this year, — re- 
affirmed with special emphasis in the State platform of Maine. 
In 185G the issue was entirely confined to resistance to the 
aggressions of slavery, but since that date the financial revul- 
sions which have led to such distress in the country have turned 
men's minds to the fallacy and the failure of the free-trade 
policy which for the last fourteen years has been adopted and 
enforced by the Democratic party. The prosperity which was 
said to have been caused by the tariff of 1846 has received a 
rude shock, and three years ago a disastrous panic swept over 
the country leaving all business embarrassed, if not prostrate. 
For several years prior to that date, every man who believed in 
the policy of protection had been ridiculed and taunted and 
pointed to the indisputable proof of the advantage of free trade 
to be found in the generally prosperous condition of the country. 
The cry in favor of the tariff of 1816 was so boisterous that no 
opponent of it could even have a hearing. Those who still 
held firmly to the policy of protection and in the belief that the 
repeal of the tariff' of 1842 was a great National blunder, were 
silenced, if not scorned, in the arena of popular discussion. 

It was in vain that Proetctionists attempted to prove that the 
period of prosperity under that tariff (from 1846 to 1856) was 
due to a series of what might be termed fortuitous circum- 
stances — all involving good fortune to the United States and 
ill fortune to other nations. 

— Firsts At the very moment of the enactment of the tariff 
of 1846, the war with Mexico broke out. The result was that 
more than one hundred thousand men were called from the 
pursuits of industry and enlisted in the ranks of our army, 
while other thousands, leaving their usual callings, were set to 
work on the production of war material. The first result was a 
deficiency in the supply of laborers and a large advance in 
wages. In the course of two years the Government paid out 
on account of the war, nearly one hundred and fifty millions of 
dollars, thus stimulating trade in almost every department. 

— Second, Midway in the Mexican war (in 1847) a distressing 
famine occurred in Ireland, which, with short crops in other 
parts of Europe, created an unprecedented demand for Ameri- 
can bread-stuffs. This, of course, raised the price of grain to 



14 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

high figures, and carried hirge profit and ready money to the 
door of every farmer in the land. 

— Thirds The Mexican war had scarcely closed, the Irish famine 
had only been partially relieved, when (in 1848-49) tumults and 
revolutions occurred in nearly every European kingdom. The 
direct result was the disorganization of industry and the depres- 
sion of trade all over the continent. Demand for our bread- 
stuffs continued, and competition of European fal)rics was so 
reduced that every form of industry in the United States was 
stimulated to fill the demands of the home market. 

— Fourth^ The convulsions of Europe were still in progress 
when another stimulus was added to our prosperity. Vast de- 
posits of gold were found in California, and from 1849 onward, 
for several years, the trade of the country in all departments 
was quickened to a degree never before known. The demand 
for shipping to carry passengers to the land of gold, and sup- 
plies to sustain them, gave new life to our navigation interests 
and filled the ocean with clipper ships that had no rivals for 
speed or beauty. The rapid additions to our gold currency, 
immediately followed by an expansion of our paper currency, 
gave such an abundance of money as had never before been 
dreamed of. The inevitable result was a rapid rise of prices 
for labor and for all commodities, and speculation and money- 
making were the order of the day. Importations from Europe 
were enormously large, and in settling the balances we followed 
the. theory of the Free-trade School, in regarding our gold as 
simply a commodity, to be shipped out of the country as freely 
as iron or lead or wheat or corn. 

— Fifths In 1854, before the craze of speculation had time to 
cool, another great event came to pass which still further in^ 
creased our prosperity. It really seemed as if the whole world 
had conspired to have every accident and every calamity happen 
for our benefit. When our prosperity was already great and 
growing, the three leading nations of Europe — as nations were 
then ranked — Great Britain, Russia and Francs — rushed into 
a tremendous war which lasted until 1856. In its progress the 
Crimean struggle absorbed the energies of the nations engaged, 
removed to a large extent the mercantile marine of England 
and France from peaceful pursuits and gave still greater expan- 



FREE TRADE EXPERIMENT OF 1846-1861. 15 

sion to our own navigation, stopped the tiow of grain from 
Russia, and gave every opportunity for trade and commerce and 
great profit to the citizens of the United States. 

But this singuhxr combination of good fortune to us and ill 
fortune to others could not continue indefinitely. Prosperity 
built upon the calamities of other nations has a most insecure 
and undesirable foundation. The three great European powers 
made peace, the Baltic and the Black Sea were thrown open 
for the exportation of Russian bread-stuffs, English and French 
ships that had been engaged in war service were at once and 
everywhere competing at low prices for the freight of the world, 
shipments of gold from California began to decrease. The 
wheel of fortune had turned, and the consequence was that the 
portentous superstructure of credit, of speculation, which had 
been based upon what the gamblers would have termed our ex- 
traordinary run of luck, suddenly came to an end when the 
luck ceased. The panic of 1857 was the closing chapter in that 
extraordinary ten years in which the political economists of the 
Democratic party were constantly mistaking effect for cause, 
were constantly blinded to the actual condition of trade and 
to the real sources of our prosperity, were constantly teaching to 
the people of the United States spurious theories, Avere con- 
stantly deceiving themselves by fallacies, and were constantl}^ 
drawing conclusions from false premises. 

Notwithstanding all the gold received from California, it was 
found that we had not enough in the hour of panic to keep 
the banks, even of the National Metropolis, from immediate 
suspension. Enterprises all over the country were checked; 
labor was thrown into confusion and distress, and for the last 
three years men have been working for less remuneration than 
has been paid to honest toil at any period within, the preceding 
quarter of a century. The policy of free trade, as embodied 
in the tariff of 1846, had, in ten years, caused such a large im- 
portation of foreign goods that, besides all our shipments of 
produce and all the earnings of our commercial marine, it 
drained us of four hundred millions of gold to make good the 
balance of trade against us. I mean four hundred millions of 
gold, net, over and above the amount which in the currents of 
trade was occasionally shipped to us from Europe. The bank- 



16 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

ers of New York, the great majority of whom had sustained 
tlie free-trade policy, were among the first to ask extension on 
their obligations. They could jiay in their own bills, but the 
specie which should have been in their vaults had been sold 
by them for shipment abroad, to make good the balance which 
their favorite tariff of 1846 had constantly accumulated against 
us in Europe. 

These lessons, fellow-citizens, are serious, and the Republican 
National Convention has appreciated their meaning. That 
convention recalls us, in its platform, to the policy of adjusting 
our revenues so as to protect labor, encourage home manufac- 
tures, create a balance of trade in our favor, and keep our gold 
at home. While fighting against the admission of servile toil 
of the black man in the new Territories of the continent, Re- 
])ublicans Avill fight also for liberal wages to the toiling white 
men of the old States of the Union. This position is the logical 
sequence, the logical necessity of the Republican party. An 
anti-slavery party is by the irresistible force of its principles a 
protection party, for it is based upon the rights of labor for the 
white man and the black man alike. 

I do not doubt, Mr. Chairman, that I dwell on this new plank 
in our Republican platform at greater length and with keener 
personal interest than would any of the gentlemen who are to 
follow me. I was a college-boy in my native State when the 
tariff of 1846 was enacted, and I can remember how profound 
and how angry was the agitation throughout Pennsylvania while 
the bill was pending, liow bitter and intense was the popular 
indignation when it was finally passed. I say popular indigna- 
tion, because the two parties were not divided on the question 
of Protection. The supporters of Mr. Polk in that State in 
the contest of 1844 cried as loudly for the tariff of '42 as 
did the supporters of Mr. Clay. 

The peculiar bitterness in Pennsylvania, the acrimony, the 
sense of betrayal which they felt, came from the fact that the 
tariff of '46 was passed through the Senate by the casting vote 
of the Vice-President, George M. Dallas, a distinguished Penn- 
sylvanian, who had been associated with Mr. Polk on the 
Democratic ticket for the purpose of rallying the State against 
the overwhelming prestige of Mr. Clay as a Protectionist. 



FREE TRADE EXPERIMENT OF 1846-1861. 17 

In the hour of trial Mr. Dallas failed his friends. Nor 
was Mr. Dallas the only man of Pennsylvania blood and birth 
who disappointed the expectation of his State. Mr. Buchanan 
was Secretary of State in Mr. Polk's Cabinet at the time, and 
though he had shown his belief in Protection by voting for the 
tariff of 1842, he exerted no influence from liis high place to 
stay its repeal, but rather co-operated with the Secretary of the 
Treasury, Robert J. Walker, another Pennsylvanian by birth, 
in his zealous work for the tariff of 184G. Tln^ee Pennsylvania 
Democrats, therefore, stand in different degrees responsible for 
the tariff of 1846, and that fact will prove of immense value 
to the Republicans in their pending struggle for political power 
in that State. 

When Mr. Buchanan ran for President four years ago, the 
bubble of fancied prosperity from Free Trade had not burst, 
and he was enabled, though, as I have already said, by the 
closest of votes, to hold his State. But there has been a revul- 
sion — possibly it may be a revolution — of public sentiment 
on this question in Pennsylvania. A distinguished citizen of 
that State, whom I met at the Republican National Convention 
in May, told me that a very large proportion — I think he said 
two-thirds — of all the iron-establishments had gone throusfh 
some form of insolvency or assignment under the tariff of 1846, 
especially within the last three years, when the Free-Traders 
went one step farther in the amendment to the tariff in 1857, 
just preceding the panic. 

Let us then do our full duty in Maine on both questions that 
are included in the National platform. The larger, grander 
issue of freedom for the Territories, which concerns " the rights 
of human nature," is in perfect harmony with tlie industrial 
issue upon which I have dwelt. Both can stand together, and 
if they do not, both will fall together. 

[The remainder and larger part of Mr. Blaine's speech was devoted to local and 
State issues, and especially to a review of the political record of Hon. Ephraim K. 
Smart, Democratic candidate for Governor of Maine.] 



18 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. 



[The subjoined resolutions were passed by tlie Senate of Maine, February 7, 
1862, —yeas 24, nays 4. In tlie House of Representatives, on the 6th and 7th 
of Marcli, they were vigorously opposed by Honorable A. P. Gould of Thomaston. 
At the conclusion of his speech, Mr. Blaine, who was Speaker of the House, 
replied to Mr. Gould — the House being in Committee of the Whole, Honorable 
William P. Frye of Lewiston in the chair. The resolutions were passed by the 
house — yeas 104, nays 26. Mr. Blaine's speech is given below.] 

STATE OF MAINE. 

RESOLVES RELATING TO NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 

Evolved, That we cordially endorse the administration of Abraham Lincoln in 
the conduct of the war against the wicked and unnatural enemies of the republic, 
and that in all its measures calculated to crush this rebellion speedily and finally, 
the administration is entitled to and will receive the unwavering support of the 
loyal people of Maine. 

liesolvcd, That it is the duty of Congress, by such means as will not jeopard 
the rights and safety of the loyal people of the South, to provide for the confisca- 
tion o1 estates real and personal of rebels, and for the forfeiture and liberation of 
every slave claimed by any person who shall continue in arms against the author- 
ity of the United States, or who shall ni any manner aid and abet the present 
wicked and unjustifiable rebellion. 

Resolved, That in this perilous crisis of the country it is tbe duty of Congress, 
in the exercise of its constitutional power to " raise and support armies," to pro- 
vide by law for accepting the services of all able-bodied men of whatever status, 
and to employ these men in such manner as military necessity and the safety 
of the Republic may demand. 

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the Senate:-; and Repre- 
sentatives in Congress from this State, and that they be respectfully requested to 
use all honorable means to secure the passage of acts embodying their spirit and 
substance. 

Mr. Chairman, — I shall best make myself understood and 
perhaps most intelligibly respond to the argument of the gen- 
tleman from Thomaston, by discussing the question in its two 
phases: first, as to the power of Congress to adopt the meas- 
ures proposed in the pending resolutions ; second, as to the 
expediency of adopting them. At the very outset, I find be- 



WAR POWER OF CONGRESS. 19 

tween the gentleman from Thomaston and myself, a radical 
difference as to the "war power" of the Constitution, — its 
origin, its extent, and the authority which shall determine 
its action, direct its operation, and fix its limit. He contends 
that the war power of this Government is lodged wholly in 
the Executive, and in describing his almost endless authority 
he piled Ossa on Pelion until he had made the President, under 
the war power of the Constitution, perfectl}^ despotic, with all 
prerogatives and privileges concentrated in his single person. 
Then with uplifted hands he reverently thanked God that 
Abraham Lincoln was not an ambitious villain to use this 
power, trample on the liberties of the nation, erect a throne for 
himself, and thus add another to the list of usurpers that have 
disfigured the world's history. That was precisely the lino of 
the gentleman's logic — first stripping all the other dejmrt- 
ments of their proj)er and Constitutional power, heaping it all 
on the President, and then thanking God that the President 
does not rule as the caprices of tyranny might dictate ! Could 
argumentative nonsense go farther ? 

I dissent from these conclusions of the gentleman. I read 
the Federal Constitution differently. I read in the most preg- 
nant and suggestive section of that charter of free government 
that certain " powers " are declared to belong to Congress. I 
read therein that "Congress shall have power," among other 
large grants of authority, "to provide for the common defense;" 
that it shall have power "to declare war, grant letters of 
marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on 
land and water ; " that it shall have power " to raise and sup- 
port armies," to "provide and maintain a navy," and to "make 
rules for the government of the land and naval forces ; " and as 
though these powers were not sufficiently broad and general 
the section concludes in its eighteenth subdivision, by declaring 
that Congress shall have power " to make all laAVs which shall 
be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the fore- 
going powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution 
in the Government of the United States or in any department 
or officer thereof." Mark that — " in any department or officer 
thereof!" 

Such are the large grants of war power made specifically to 



20 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Congress in the Federal Constitution ; and to show that these 
grants were understood to be of indefinite extent, bounded and 
limited only by the law of necessit}^ I shall quote an authority 
Avhicli for three-quarters of a century has received the undi- 
vided respect of the nation — an authority which has been 
respected and accepted by all the most eminent Constitutional 
lawyers of our country, from Chief Justice Marshall, the great- 
est of our earlier jurists, to Daniel Webster, the greatest of all. 
I refer to the writings of Alexander Hamilton in the Feder- 
alist. In the twenty-third number of that valuable series of 
political papers, Mr. Hamilton discusses the very question at 
issue here to-day in reference to the power of the Government 
to defend and preserve "the public peace " against " internal 
convulsions " as well as " external attacks." Speaking of the 
power to provide for the " common defense," specifically de- 
clared in the Constitution itself, as I have above quoted, to be 
a "Congressional power," Mr, Hamilton says, — 

"The authorities essential to the care of the common defense are these: 
to raise armies ; to build and equip fleets ; to prescribe rules for the govern- 
ment of both ; to direct their operations ; to provide for their support. 
These powers ought to exist without limitation; because it is impossible to 
foresee or to define the extent and variety of national exigencies, and the cor- 
respondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy 
them. The circumstances tiiat endanger the safety of nations are infinite; 
and for this reason, no Constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the 
power to which the care of it is committed. This power ouglit to be co-ex- 
tensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances, and ought 
to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to pre- 
side over the connnou defense. 

" This is one of those truths which, to a correct and unprejudiced mind, 
carries its own evidence along with it, and may be obscured, but cannot be 
made plainer by argument or reasoning. It rests upon axioms as simple as 
they are universal — the means ought to be proportioned to the end: the 
persons from whose agency the attainment of any end is expected, ought to 
possess the means by which it is to be attained. 

..." And unless it can be shown that the circumstances which may 
affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate limits; 
utdess the contrary of this position can be fairly and rationally disputed, it 
must be admitted as a necessary consequence that there can be no limitation 
of that authority, which is to provide for the defense and protection of the 
community, in any matter essential to its efficacy." 

The great respect due to the (quotation I have just made 
comes in the first place from the eminent character of its 
author. It derives an enhanced force from the fact that Mr. 
Hamilton assisted in framing the Constitution, whose meaning 



WAR POWER OF CONGRESS. 21 

he was so clearly expounding ; and, in the third place, it is of 
especial value from the circumstance that it was written pending 
the adoption of the Constitution, and as an inducement to the 
people to ratify it. It is to be noted, moreover, that Mr. Ham- 
ilton was the acknowledged leader of the Federal party of that 
day — a party accused, and perhaps justly, of wishing to vest 
all the power possible in the hands of the President ; and yet 
this Prince of Federalists concedes, or rather I should say spe- 
cifically asserts, that the principles on which any war shall be 
conducted, whether against '' internal convulsion " or " external 
attack," shall be determined by Congress. I beg you farther 
to observe, Mr. Chairman, that at the very time Mr. Ham- 
ilton was penning and publishing the words I have quoted, 
Patrick Henry, the leading spirit of the Republicans, who 
opposed the Federal Constitution, and who well-nigh succeeded 
in defeating the adoption of that instrument in Virginia, 
grounded his opposition cliiefly on the fact that this large grant 
of power was made to Congress. He appealed with vehement 
warmth to the slave-holding interest, then as now so sensitive 
as to its presumed rights and dangers, warning them and 
bidding them remember that in certain contingencies and exi- 
gencies " Congress could under the war power of the Constitu- 
tion, abolish slavery in all the States." We thus have, Mr. 
Chairman, as contemporaneous expositions of the Constitution, 
the expressed opinions of the leading Federalist and a leadino- 
Republican of that era; both eminent, both honest, the one 
supporting, the other opposing, the new Constitution for pre- 
cisely the same reasons. Assuredly this is an agreement of 
testimony as remarkable as it is conclusive. 

At the origin of our government, Mr. Chairman, the people 
were jealous of their liberties ; they gave power guardedly and 
grudgingly to their rulers; they were hostile above all things 
to what is termed the one-man power. You cannot but ob- 
serve with what peculiar care they provided against the abuse 
of the " war power ; " for after giving to Congress the power 
''to declare war" and "to raise and support armies," they 
added in the Constitution these emphatic words, — '•'-hut no 
appropriation of money to tliat iiae shall he for a longer term than 
two years,'' precisely the period for which the Representatives 



22 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

in the popular branch are chosen. Tims, sir, this power was 
not given to Congress simply, but in effect it was given to 
the House of Representatives ; the people placing it where they 
could lay their hands directly upon it at every biennial elec- 
tion, and say " yes " or " no " to the principles or policy of any 
war. It is worthy of note that this popular control is secured 
in every part of the Constitution ; for not only do the people 
in their primary capacity, by direct suffrage, elect their Repre- 
sentatives every two years, but in case of a vacancy happening, 
no power save that of the people themselves is able to fill it. 
If a vacancy happens in the Senate, the Governor of a State 
may appoint a successor till the Legislature meet ; but if it 
occur " in the representation of any State," the Constitution 
simply declares that the executive authority of such State "shall 
issue writs of election to fill such vacancy " — leaving to the 
people directly the choice of the Representative. It is more- 
over declared in the Constitution, " that all bills for revenue 
shall originate in the House of Representatives," thus giving 
again to popular control the power of the " purse " which is 
greater than the power of the " sword " — as without it the 
sword has " neither force nor edge." Talk, sir, as the gentle- 
man from Thomaston has, for so many hours, about the war 
power being lodged exclusively in the President ! The gentle- 
man should know, eminent as he is esteemed to be in the 
knowledge of law, that without the assent of Congress there 
can be no war, and Congress can stop the war at any moment 
it chooses. Without the assent of Congress and the supply 
of money by Congress, the Quartermaster can give you no 
transportation ; the Commissary cannot issue a ration ; the 
Chief of Ordnance cannot furnish a cartridge ; the Paymaster 
cannot give a private a single month's wages. As the House 
of Commons in Ensfland controls the aristocratic Chamber of 
Lords and holds in check the power of the Throne by having 
the exclusive right to originate " Supply Bills," so, sir, our 
House of Representatives, through the right to originate bills 
of revenue, causes the fresh and vigorous voice of the people 
to be heard against the longer-tenured power of Senators and 
the individual will of the Executive. In attempting thus to 
strip the Representative bi-anch of its rightful prerogative and 



WAR POWER OF CONGRESS. 23 

of the thousand incidental powers derived from it and tlirough 
it, the gentleman from Thomaston has aimed to curtail the fran- 
chise of the people and to surrender their rights to the judg- 
ment, and possihly to the caprices, of a single man. 

I beg now, sir, to controvert another position of the gentle- 
man from Thomaston — a position which he sought to fortify 
with great elaboration of argument. He has quoted the Trea- 
son clause of the Constitution, and has stoutly maintained that 
the armed rebels in the South have still the full right to the 
protection of property guaranteed therein, and that any confis- 
cation of their property or estates by any other process than is 
there laid down would be unconstitutional. I am endeavoring 
to state the position of the gentleman with entire candor, as I 
desire to meet his argument throughout in that spirit. I main- 
tain, sir, in opjDOsition to this view, that we derive the right to 
confiscate the property and liberate the slaves of rebels from 
a totally different source. I maintain that to-day we are in a 
state of civil war — civil war, too, of the most gigantic propor- 
tions. And I think it will strike this House as a singular and 
significant confession of the unsoundness of the gentleman's 
argument, that to sustain his positions he had to deny that we 
are engaged in civil war at all. He stated, much to the amuse- 
ment of the House, I think, that it was not a civil war because 
Jefferson Davis was not seeking to wrest the Presidential chair 
from Abraham Lincoln, but simply to carry off a portion of the 
Union in order to form a separate government. Pray, sir, is 
not Abraham Lincoln the rightful President of the whole country 
and of all the States, and is it not interfering as much with his 
Constitutional prerogative to dispute his authority in Georgia 
or Louisiana as it would be to dispute it in Maine or Illinois? 
Sir, what constitutes a civil war? That is settled by Literna- 
tional Law; and I am but repeating a principle familiar to 
every school-boy when I read from Vattel the following per- 
tinent declarations, which I venture to say never were and 
never will be disputed by any one except the gentleman from 
Thomaston : — 

" When a party is formed in a State, which no longer obeys the sovereign, 
and is of strength sufficient to make head against him; or when in a repub- 
lic the nation is divided into two opposite factions, and both sides takes 



24 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

arms ; this is called a civil war. . . . The sovereign indeed never fails to 
term rebels all subjects openly resisting him ; but when these become of 
strength sufficient to oppose him, so that he finds himself compelled to make 
war regularly on them, he must be contented with the term civil war." 

And as we are engaged in civil war, what is the result? 
Simply that the contest must be carried on as between foreign 
parties, and on that point I again quote Vattel : — 

" Whenever a numerous party thinks it has a right to resist the sovereign,. 
and finds itself able to declare that opinion sword in hand, the war is to be 
carried on between them in the same manner as between two different 
nations." 

I need not say, sir, that we are proceeding precisely on that 
principle to-day. On what other ground do we send back thou- 
sands of traitors taken with arms in their hands, as exchanged 
prisoners, instead of indicting, trying and hanging them ? On 
what other ground are we continually receiving and sending 
flags of truce ? On what other ground did Howell Cobb come 
down only last week to Fortress Monroe and hold a parley 
with General Wool as to a systematic exchange of prisoners? 
On what other ground do we blockade the Southern ports? On 
what other ground did President Lincoln but a few days since 
order that the men taken from the Confederate privateers 
should be removed from Moyamensing Jail and treated as 
prisoners of war ? This, sir, was the last as it was the greatest 
concession, and it leaves us to-day in the attitude of practically 
conceding, without formally granting, to the so-called Confeder- 
ate States the same rights of war that we would accord to any 
belligerent power; and I understand the gentleman from Thoiii- 
aston to approve this course? [Mr. Gould nodded assent.] 
And yet, Mr. Chairman, while conceding all these rights and 
immunities, the gentleman tells you that Congress shall not 
authorize the confiscation of the property or the liberation of 
the slaves of a single rebel except by "due process of law." 
In other words, the gentleman gives to traitors the protection 
of belligerents outside or independent of the Constitution, 
and of loyal citizens inside or under the Constitution, at one 
and the same time. He denies the right of our Government 
to proceed against them by virtue of any rights acquired from 
the belligerent character of parties, or indeed, to quote his. 



FEDERAL POWER IN CIVIL WAR. 25 

exact words, in any other mode than by " due process of law." 
The argument of the gentleman gives every advantage to the 
rebels and imposes every disability on the I'ederal Government, 
and in assuming this ground I charge the gentleman with hav- 
ing advocated the cause of the Confederacy just as effectually 
as though he had appeared here its avowed champion with a 
retainer in his pocket from the Government at Richmond. Sir, 
I am in favor of conducting this contest effectively and honor- 
ably ; and I perceive and think I appreciate the policy which 
our Government, however reluctantly, has adopted in carrying 
on hostilities with the ordinary usages and principles of war. 
Indeed, after the rebellion assumed its colossal proportions it 
was quite impossible to do otherwise without encountering 
numberless and insuperable embarrassments. All that I ask, 
sir, is that we shall receive as good as we give, and that since 
we are forced to treat these rebels as public enemies and incur 
all the disadvantages resulting therefrom, we shall at least have 
the corresjDonding advantages that logically pertain to our posi- 
tion, and shall in consequence thereof exercise and. enforce the 
rights of war against the so-called Confederates so long as 
the state of war continues. 

In pursuance of the principles I have enunciated, I lay down 
the proposition as broadly as my language can express it, that 
every power and prerogative which the Federal Government 
would rightfully possess in war against England, France, Brazil, 
Mexico, or any other foreign power, it does this day possess 
against the so-called Confederate States. But the moment 
these war powers are carried to the destruction or forfeiture of 
the property of a rebel, the gentleman from Thomaston cries 
out that the Constitution of the United States is violated in 
the section where Congress is prohibited forfeiting property 
" except during the life of the person attainted " of treason. 
I tell the gentleman that the operation of that clause of the 
Constitution is one governing the civil tribunals of the land, 
where courts are in session, juries empaneled, precepts served, 
and the process of law unobstructed. If he contends that it 
is applicable to a condition of things wherein the civil power of 
the Government has ceased to be operative in eleven States, he 
must contend by parity of reasoning that every other provision 



26 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

of the Constitution is equally operative, and that the state of 
belligerence does not supervene with its own well-defined and 
self-protective laws. If he takes this ground, and there is none 
other left him, I ask him, whence is derived the power to 
blockade the ports of the Rebel States ? The Constitution of 
the United States says expressly that " no preference shall be 
given to the ports of one State over those of another." And 
yet directly in the face of this inhibition, a blockade of the 
most rigorous character has been instituted by which Charles- 
ton, Savannah, New Orleans and all other Southern ports are 
cut off from commerce, while New York, Boston, Portland and 
all other loyal ports are left in the free and unrestricted enjoy- 
ment of trade. Whence is the power derived to do this? The 
gentleman does not answer. Is it an unconstitutional act 
because in apparent conflict with the letter of one section of 
that instrument ? How can the gentleman justify the act other 
than by the war power of the Government blockading the 
ports of the so-called Confederate States, just as we blockaded 
the ports of Mexico when at war with that Republic ? 

If the argument of the gentleman from Thomaston were 
carried to its legitimate conclusion, Mr. Chairman, your Union 
armies could not shoot a single rebel nor imprison a single 
traitor, for the Constitution declares that " no person shall be 
deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." 
To assume the ground of the gentleman from Thomaston with 
its legitimate sequences, is practically to give up the contest. 
For he tells you, and he certainly repeated it a score of times, 
that you cannot deprive these rebels of their property except 
"by due process of law," and at the same time he confesses 
that within the rebel territory it is impossible to serve any 
precept or enforce any verdict. At the same time he declares 
that we have not belligerent rights because the contest is not 
a civil war. Pray what kind of a war is it? The gentleman 
acknowledges that the rebels are traitors, and if so they 
must be engaged in some kind of war, because the Constitu- 
tion declares that "treason against the United States shall 
consist only in levying war against them." It is therefore war 
on their side. It must also be war on ours, and if so, what 
kind of war ? 



PRECEDENT IN MEXICAN WAR. 27 

Mr. Gould rose and said that he would define it as domestic 
war. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Blaine (resuming). Domestic war ! Well, Mr. Chair- 
man, I think we shall learn something before this discussion 
is closed. Domestic war I I have heard of domestic woollens, 
domestic sheetings, and domestic felicity, but a " domestic war " 
is something entirely new under the sun. All the writers of 
international law that I have ever read, speak of two kinds of 
war, foreign and civil. Vattel will, I suppose, have a new edi- 
tion with annotations by Gould, in which " domestic war " 
will be defined and illustrated as a contest not quite foreign, 
not quite civil, but one in which the rebellious party have at 
one and the same time all the rights of peaceful citizens and all 
the immunities of alien enemies — for that is precisely what the 
gentleman by his argument claims for the Southern secessionists. 

But, sir, I have been digressing. The line of my argument 
was leading me to show the rights of war as defined and 
accorded by international law — having already demonstrated 
that whatever these rights may be we have them to-day as 
against the so-called Confederate States. I have briefly stated 
what these rights are in respect to the property of the enemy, 
as defined in books of European and American authority. I 
propose in addition to show what we as a nation have construed 
them to be in practice. I propose to show to the House that in 
the Mexican war our government through instructions issuing 
from the War Department, then presided over by one of the 
most eminent of American statesmen (the late Governor Marcy), 
sanctioned the very doctrines I have advocated. In a letter of 
instruction to General Taylor, Sept. 22, 1846, Governor Marcy 
laid down the principle that " an invading army has the unques- 
tionable right to draw its supplies from the enemy without pay- 
ing for them, to require contributions for its support and to 
make the enemy feel the -weight of the war ; " and General 
Taylor was accordingly instructed to proceed in the campaign 
on this principle. A few months later President Polk, in a 
letter to his Secretary of the Treasury, Robert J. Walker, main- 
tained " the right of the conqueror to levy contributions on the 
enemy in their seaports, towns or provinces, and to apply the 
same to defray the expanses of the war." On this principle he 



28 rOLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

seized the Mexican Custom Houses, levied the duties and turned 
all the receipts into the coffers of the Union, and, in a letter to 
the Secretary of the Navy, March 31, 1847, Mr. Polk '^claimed 
and exercised this as a belligerent right." 

Against the Mexicans, sir, this was an indisputably proper 
exercise of the belligerent power. Viewed externally, other 
nations could do nothing else than acquiesce in it. But from 
an internal point of view, a very grave question arose in regard 
to it, and it was the same which divides the gentleman from 
Thomaston and myself in one branch of this discussion to-day. 
That question was whether the President had the right to 
direct this seizure of the Custom Houses and this collection of 
duties, or whether it was a matter belonging primarily and ex- 
clusively to Congress as the war-making power of the Govern- 
ment, entitled to " prescribe rules concerning captures on land 
and water." The subject was discussed with some warmth at 
the time in both branches of Congress, and though Mr. Polk's 
course was sustained by the partisan majority in both Senate 
and House, the weight of the argument was clearly against him 
— Mr. Webster demonstrating with his ponderous logic that the 
power did not belong to the President. The subject was of 
such importance as to call for notice and discussion in the late 
edition of Kent's Commentaries, where after minutely stating 
what President Polk had done, the learned commentator makes 
the following remarks : — 

" All these rights of war undoubtedly belong to the conqueror or nation 
who holds foreign places and countries by conquest ; but the exercise of 
those rights and powers, except those that temporarily arise from necessity, 
belong to that power in the government to which the prerogative of war is 
constitutionally confided. . . . These fiscal and commercial regulations, 
issued and enforced at the mere pleasure of a President, would seem to press 
strongly upon the Constitutional power of Congress to raise and support 
annies, to lay and collect taxes, duties, and imports, and to regulate com- 
merce with foreign nations, and to declare war, and make rules for the gov- 
ernment and regulation of the land and naval forces, and concerning captures 
on land and water, and to define offenses against the law of nations. 
Though the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, and 
declares him to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United 
States, these powers must necessarily be subordinate to the legislative power 
in Congress. It would appear to me to be the policy or true construction of 
this simple and general grant of executive power to the President, not to 
suffer it to interfere with those specific powers of Congress which are more 
safely deposited in the legislative department, and that the powers thus 
assumed by the President do not belong to him, but to Congress." 



AUTHORITY OF WEBSTER AND KENT. 2!) 

I very much fear that the extensive law library of the gentle- 
man from Thomaston is not graced with the latest edition of 
Kent, or he would hardly have ventured to lay down doc- 
trines and principles which are so pointedly denied by the great 
Chancellor. 

This construction, enunciated by Webster and Kent, I main- 
tain, sir, is understood to be, and in his official papers is de- 
clared to be, the doctrine of President Lincoln, whom the 
gentleman has endeavored so ingeniously to misrepresent in his 
argument and to damage by his support. The gentleman stated 
that the President had reversed General Fremont's order of con- 
fiscation because of its inexpediency and tendency to " raise a 
great row." The simple fact of the record is, and that is all we 
have to appeal to, that the President stated in his letter to Gen- 
eral P'remont, that " he thought it proper to adhere to and not 
transcend the law of Congress " — and as General Fremont's 
order did transcend the Confiscation Act of the extra session of 
Congress, he was directed that it be changed to conform to that 
Act. The meaning of this declaration of the President was that 
Congress and Congress only had the right to do that which 
General Fremont, in his proclamation, proposed to do ; and this 
meaning was made still more distinctly manifest by the follow- 
ing declarations in the message of the President at the begin- 
ning of the present session of Congress. I quote : 

"I have, in every case, thought it proper to keep the integrity of the 
Union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving 
all questions which are not of vital military importance to the more delib- 
erate action of the Legislature. 

" So, also, obeying the dictates of prudence as well as the obligations of 
law, instead of transcending I have adliered to the act of Congress to con- 
fiscate property used for insurrectionary purjDoses. If a new law upon the 
same subject shall be proposed, its propriety will be duly considered. The 
Union must be preserved; and hence all indispensable means must be 
employed." 

General Halleck, who is no less a lawyer than a military 
chieftain, has deliberately expressed the opinion that he has no 
right to liberate a single negro, except as authorized to do so by 
the war power of Congress — thereby very clearly and closely 
following the admirable exposition of the Constitution as laid 
down by Chief Justice Marshall in the famous case of Brown 
vs. the United States. 



30 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

John Quincy Adams, whose name is respected wherever popu- 
lar liberty has an advocate, formulated the following pro^josition 
on the floor of the House of Representatives : 

"From tlie instant that your slave-holding States become the theatre of 
war, civil or foreign, from that instant the war powers of Congress extend 
to interference witli the institution of sLavery, in every way in which it can 
be interfered with — from a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, 
to the cession of the State burdened with slavery to a foreign power. 

"If civil war come, if insurrection come, is this beleaguered Capital, is 
this besieged Government to see millions of its subjects in arms, and have 
no right to break the fetters which they are forging into swords? No ! The 
war power of the Government can sweep this Institution into the Gulf." 

In a House full of able, brilliant Southern lawyers. Wise and 
Dromgoole and Rhett and Marshall among them, not one dared 
to dispute the proposition, Mark the extent to which Mr. 
Adams carries the war power of Congress — "even to the ces- 
sion of the State burdened with slavery to a foreign power ! " 

There was one error, Mr. Chairman, which seemed to haunt 
the gentleman from Thomaston very persistently throughout 
his argument — and that was the alleged impossibility of bring- 
ing the war power to bear against the rebels without first con- 
ceding that they had actually carried their States out of the 
Union. He stated many times that if the rebel States are 
integral members of the Union, the contest Avith the rebels 
themselves cannot be carried on as a war, and conversely, to 
concede that it is war, is to concede that the States have 
actually seceded and set up a separate power. No statement 
could be more fallacious, as the gentleman himself Avill see by 
recurring to fundamental principles. The State cannot be 
compromised or destroyed by the wrongful acts of ever so large 
a majority of its people. The wrong-doers, by the very force t)f 
their numbers, may and do acquire certain immunities against 
individual punishment, as I have already shown, but they do 
not acquire the right to change the relations of tlie State. I 
maintain as stoutly as he does, that Virginia and Tennessee, and 
all the rest of the eleven, are to-day States in the Union, and 
that the Constitution and laws of the nation are operative 
within their borders. A rebellious force, however, having risen 
to such strength as to thwart the civil power and j)revent the 
actual operation of the laws, it is the duty of tlie nation, 



ARE THE STATES IN THE UNION? 31 

through the war power, to vindicate its authority, so that a 
Constitution which is operative may be actually operating, and 
laws which are in force may be really enforced. The gentle- 
man's laborious effort, therefore, to demolish the theory of Sen- 
ator Sumner in regard to the suicide of the Rebel States, has 
no pertinency whatever in this discussion. All the positions I 
have assumed, and all the arguments I have made use of to sus- 
tain these positions, have expressly negatived the theory of Mr. 
Sumner, and therefore I am not called upon to notice it further. 
I have merely to say in leaving this topic that the argument 
which maintains that the States must necessarily be out of the 
Union before a contest with their rebellious inhabitants could 
be conducted as a civil war, is nothing short of an Irish bull of 
the most grotesque description. If the States are not members 
of the Union they are a foreign power, and of course a contest 
with their people could not be a civil war. The very essence 
of a civil war consists in its being a strife between members 
properly subject to the same sovereign authorit}^ ; and the 
dilemma herein suggested is the same which has driven the 
gentleman to deny, as he has done, that this contest is either a 
" foreign war " or a " civil war." He was compelled to manu- 
facture a new kind of war — "domestic" he styled it — in 
order as he hoped, to escape the conclusions which some of his 
propositions led to. The gentleman setting out with radically 
erroneous premises could do nothing else than wander away 
from the landmarks of truth and sound logic — and there he 
continues to wander " in endless mazes lost." 

In summing up these resolves, sir, I maintain that they pro- 
pose nothing which may not be properly done under the Con- 
stitution of the United States. They are moderate resolutions 
— conservative in doctrine, and well guarded in expression. I 
believe that the adoption of their substance by Congress would 
be beneficial to the Union cause : I believe that such measures 
are especially dreaded b}^ the rebels. I feel assured, sir, that a 
Confiscation Act would prove verily a terror unto evil-doers. 
I have said that the legislation demanded is entirely within 
the power of Congress without infringing the Constitution or 
rather in direct pursuance of the war power of that instrument 
as expounded by Hamilton and Henry, by Adams and Webster, 



82 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

by Marshall and Kent. All that I have proposed and advo- 
cated will in no wise conflict with the Constitution, and I think 
the rebellion will be subdued without resorting to extra Con- 
stitutional measures. But lest the gentleman should infer that 
I shrink from the logical consequences of some propositions 
which I have laid down as ultimate steps, I tell him frankly that 
if the life of the nation seemed to demand the violation of the 
Constitution, I would violate it — and in taking this ground I 
am but repeating the expression of President Lincoln in his 
message, when he declared that " it were better to violate one 
provision than that all should perish." I will give a higher 
and more venerable authority than President Lincoln, for the 
same doctrine. No less a personage than Thomas Jefferson 
wrote the following sentiments, in a letter to J. B. Colvin, from 
his retirement at Monticello, Sept. 22, 1810 : 

" The question you propose, whether circumstances do not sometimes 
occur which make it a duty in officers of high trust to assume authorities 
beyond the law, is easy of sohxtion in principle, but sometimes embarrass- 
ing in practice. A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one 
of^the high duties of a good citizen ; but it is not the highest. The laws of 
necessity! of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of 
higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written 
law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those 
who are enjoying them with us ; thus absurdly sacrificiug the end to the 
means." 

This doctrine cuts right athwart and scatters to the four 
winds of heaven the whole argument of the gentleman. He 
sticks to forms : I contend for substance. He sacrifices the end 
to the means : I stand ready to use the means essential to the 
end. I uphold the doctrines of Jefferson and Lincoln; he 
assumes a ground which both of those statesmen have de- 
nounced and execrated. 

I have been discussing these questions, Mr. Chairman, in no 
partisan spirit. I feel none. As a Republican, I have been 
among the foremost to welcome loyal Democrats to a hearty 
and generous co-operation in sustaining the measures necessary 
to vindicate the authority of the Union. I recognize the sena- 
tor from Knox [Colonel Smart] whom I am glad to see among 
my auditors, as a cordial co-laborer in the good cause : my friend 
across the hall from Oldtown [Mr. Sewall] I cordially greet and 



REPUBLICAN MAGNANIMITY, 33 

warmly welcome. I mention these gentlemen because they are 
this moment before me, and because they are types of many 
other loyal Democrats who hold the same good principles. The 
gentleman from Thomaston, by the doctrines he has advocated, 
has placed himself outside the pale, and until he recants his 
errors we cannot receive him into fellowsliip. I remember, and 
I do not quote it irreverently, the injunction to the Church to 
add to itself only " such as shall be saved." 

I claim, Mr. Chairman, that in the whole history of partisan 
organizations not one can be found which has acted with the 
generosity and liberality that have characterized the Republi- 
cans since the outbreak of the rebellion. In the State of Ohio, 
sir, with sixty thousand partisan majority, the Republicans 
.patriotically and most liberally gave the gubernatorial nomina- 
tion last year to a lifelong Democrat — David Tod, who presided 
over the Convention that nominated Mr. Douglas for the Presi- 
dency — and they elected him by an overwhelming majority. 
With similar unselfishness they allowed one branch of the Legis- 
lature to fall under the control of those Avho were supposed 
to be loyal Democrats. And what is the result ? To-day the 
Democrats in the branch of the Legislature controlled by them, 
oppose and may possibly defeat the re-election to the United 
States Senate of that most earnest, brave, and true man, Ben- 
jamin F. Wade. That is the return the Republicans are re- 
ceiving for their lavish generosity towards political opponents. 

In New York, sir, equal generosity was shown by the Repub- 
licans at the last election. They went so far even as to place 
their lifelong opponent, Daniel S. Dickinson, at the head of 
their State ticket, and gave the Democrats half of tlie remain- 
der of the nominees, all of whom were triumphantly elected. 
In return, they have received nothing but reviling and abuse. 
I ask any gentleman to point out a single locality where, the 
Democrats having a clear majority, a Republican has received 
the slightest recognition. To-day we are invited by the gentle- 
man from Thomaston patriotically to abandon our entire party 
organization. Magnanimous advice ! Disinterested counsel ! I 
say to the Republicans of this House, that while I am opposed 
to stirring up partisan feeling during this crisis in the affairs of 
the nation, yet we must look well to it that we sustain with 



34 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

increased vigor the Administration of Abraham Lincoln, which 
we bronglit into jjower, and for whose acts we shall be held 
responsible. While, then, we will welcome to our political fire- 
side all who are disposed to co-operate with us, we will jealously 
guard against all these insidious attempts to disrupt that party 
organization, which is alone able to give to the Administration 
an efficient and permanent support. And when I urge this 
]K)licy I am sure that I speak no less the sentiments of patriotic 
Republicans than of those loyal Democrats who intend to stand 
by the Administration to the end of this struggle with rebellion 
and treason. 

I confess, Mr. Chairman, I distrust the sincerity and endur- 
ance of the gentleman from Thomaston as a supporter of Mr. 
Lincoln. He has been led to zealous expressions in favor of 
the President because he imagines there is to be a serious dif- 
ference between the Executive policy and the Congressional 
policy in the conduct of the war. In that I am sure he will 
find himself in error. The President and Congress are both 
trying to follow the wisest course possible, and there will be no 
divergence in their ways when the discussion has closed. We 
liave this very morning, sir, heard from the President in a com- 
munication of as great importance as any that has ever ema- 
nated from the Executive Mansion. I hold in my hand his 
message sent to Congress yesterday, in which he proposes com- 
pensation to the States that may agree to abolish slavery. I 
want to know from the gentleman from Thomaston if he sup- 
ports the President in that policy ? 

Mr. Gould. I understand the President's proposition to be 
to compensate all the slave-owners, loyal and disloyal alike, and 
in that view, as a peace measure, I might possibly go for it. I 
would not say that I would support it otherwise. 

Mr. Blaine. A most remarkable interpretation of the Pres- 
ident's position, truly I The gentleman thinks that Abraham 
Lincoln is solemnly proposing to pay the rebels hard cash for 
their slaves, and thus to replenish their treasury, otherwise so 
nearly exhausted. A brilliant policy indeed ! But this con- 
struction Avhich the gentleman puts on the Message is in perfect 
keeping with the determination which he has steadily shown 
to put the estates and the slaves of rebels on the same foot- 



VICTORIES FOR THE UNION. 35 

ing and under the same protection as those of loyal men. If 
negroes are to be paid for, the gentleman is determined that 
the rebels shall have their full share of the cash. I think Presi- 
dent Lincoln would be slightly surprised if any one should tell 
him that the country understood his proposition in that way ; 
and yet, unless it does mean that, the gentleman from Thomas- 
ton says he will not support it — thus at the first practical 
test, deserting the President whom he has eulogized so highly. 

I read, sir, in that message, something more than a great 
proposition for compensated emancipation. 1 read in it a decla- 
ration as plain as language can make, that whatever measures 
may be deemed necessary to crush out this rebellion speedily 
and effectually, will be unhesitatingly adojDted. What else does 
the President mean when he says that " all indispensable means 
must be employed for the preservation of the Union," that 
"• tlie war must continue " as long as resistance continues, with- 
out regard to the ruin which must attend it? What does the 
President mean by this language? Still more, what does he 
mean when he declares that "• such measures as may obviousl}' 
promise great efficiency towards ending the struggle must and 
will come " ? I ask the gentleman what the President means by 
that, and he refuses to answer me. It means the adoption of 
precisely such measures as we are discussing here to-day, and 
these resolutions are but sustaining the already foreshadowed 
policy of the President, whenever the necessity for their en- 
forcement arises, or whenever the}'" may, in his own language, 
"promise great efficiency towards ending the struggle." 

This mighty struggle, sir, will close Avith victory for the 
Union and for Constitutional Liberty. The triumphs at Mill 
Spring, at Roanoke, at Henry, and at Donelson, are but the 
earnest of the unbroken success which, under the vigorous coun- 
sels now controlling the army, are to attend the Union cause. 
It is not to be as it has been. In the past autumn and early 
winter our prospects seemed dark and drear}-. We closed the 
year with those terrible disasters at Big Bethel, at Bull Run, at 
Ball's Bluff, unredeemed ; and our national energies seemed 
paralyzed with inaction and with treason. The war was being 
conducted in a manner that never did and never will and never 
can achieve any thing but misfortune and disgrace. It was a 



36 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

war of half measures, painfully parallel in policy with that 
which in England, under the temporizing expedients urged by 
such leaders as Essex and Manchester and Northumberland, 
had well-nigh sacrificed the popular cause in the contest with 
the first Charles — a policy which is thus described and de- 
nounced by that memorable historian and statesman of England 
whose untimely death, two years ago, was so deeply deplored 
on both sides of the Atlantic. 

" If there be any truth established by the universal experience of nations, 
it is this : tliat to carry the spirit of peace into war, is a weak and cruel 
policy. The time of ^legotiation is the time for deliberation and delay. 
But when an extreme case calls for that remedy, whicli is in its oNvn nature 
most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, 
it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothmg 
which negotiation or submission will not do better; and to act on^ any other 
principle^ is not to save blood and money, but to squander them." 

As an apposite illustration of the pregnant truth thus enunci- 
ated by Lord Macaulay, I close by quoting the well-known dec- 
laration of Edwin M. Stanton, "that the failure of General 
McClellan to attack Manassas in December last will cost this 
nation three hundred millions of dollars and thirty thousand 
precious lives." 



NOMINATION FOR CONGRESS. 37 



SPEECH OF MR. BLAINE ACCEPTING HIS FIRST 
NOMINATION TO CONGRESS. 



[Unanimously conferred upon him by a Republican Convention held at 
Waterville, Maine, July 8, 1862, IIoiTorable Anson P. Morrill, the sitting 
Member, having previously declined a re-election. ] 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention, — 
I am here to acknowledge with sincere thanks the honor 
which you have conferred upon me by selecting me as your 
candidate for Representative in the Thirty-eighth Congress. 
The unanimity of your action is to me one of its most embar- 
rassing features, for it implies a confidence in my fitness for the 
position which I myself may well distrust. I can only pledge 
my best intentions and my most earnest efforts to serve this 
constituency faithfully and zealously, should the nomination 
this day made be ratified at the polls. 

The Kennebec District — the name which this county has 
always given to the Congressional District in which it has been 
included at each decennial apportionment — has established a 
character at home and abroad which is difficult to live up to. 
The distinguished gentleman who now represents it (and whose 
voluntary retirement gives you this opportunity to place me 
under deep obligation by the bestowment of your conhdence) 
has won great and important victories on hard-fought political 
fields, and, in connection with the present Vice-President of 
the United States, has done more than any other living man to 
overthrow the Democratic party of Maine. He retires from 
public life full of honors, and with the unstinted confidence 
and attachment of the Republicans of the entire State. 

But long before Mr. Morrill's participation in political affairs, 
the old Kennebec District had won great prominence in Con- 
gress by the ability, the rii)e culture, the superb talent for 



38 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

debate exhibited by two gentlemen who represented it from 
1825 to 1841 — Peleg Sprague and George Evans. I see before 
me gray-haired men whose political activity is stirred afresh by 
the memory of the contests they waged in this district under 
the leadci'ship of those young men — for each was in his early 
thirties when called to lead the National Republican forces 
against the Democratic d3'nasty of Jackson and Van Buren. 

Nor should I fail to name the able editor, the sincere friend, 
the judicious adviser, the upright man, Luther Severance, who 
after promoting the elections of Mr. Sprague and Mr. Evans with 
unsurpassed activity and zeal, was rewarded with succession to 
the seat to which they had given eminent distinction. If you 
will pardon the personal reference, I regarded it as the chief 
honor of my life, before you crowned me with your favor to-day, 
that I followed Luther Severance, longo mtervallo^ in the editor- 
ship of the Kennebec Journal^ which he had founded and nur- 
tured, and to which he had given character and prominence 
throughout the State. There have perhaps been more brilliant 
men in Maine than Luther Severance, but not one who ever 
enjoyed the })ublic confidence in a higher degree or repaid that 
confidence more amply by an honorable and stainless life. 

It is not wise for candidates to indulge in i:)rofuse promises. 
The Representative must be tested by his acts rather than by 
his professions. I deem it my duty, however, to say that if 
I am called to a seat in Congress, I shall go there with a 
determination to stand heartily and unreservedly by the Admin- 
istration of Abraham Lincoln. In the success of that Adminis- 
tration, under the good Providence of God, rests, I solemnly 
believe, the fate of the American Union. If we cannot subdue 
the Rebellion through the agency of the Administration, there 
is no other power given under Heaven among men to whicli 
we can appeal. Hence I repeat, that I shall conceive it to l)e 
my duty, as your Representative, to be the unswerving adherent 
of the policy and measures which the President in his wisdom 
may adopt. The case is one, in the present exigency, where 
men loyal to the Union cannot divide. The President is Com- 
mander-in-Chief of our land and naval forces, and while he may 
be counseled he must not be opposed. It is well to recall the 
lesson of that adage which teaches that one bad general is 



NOMINATION FOR CONGRESS. 39 

better than two good ones. Let us then discourage divisions 
and encourage harmony. 

In this way alone, gentlemen, can we preserve that unity of 
action among the loyal people so essential to the maintenance 
of our Nationality. That unity once broken, we can have no 
well-founded hope of success. We hear a great deal of talk 
about the base of operations in the war ; at one time on the 
Rappahannock River, at another on the York, and at still an- 
other on the James. But there is one base of operations 
stronger than all these, and that is on the united heai-ts and the 
united action of the loyal people in these States. That once 
destroyed, all other bases of operation are gone. 

The great object with us all is to subdue the Rebellion — 
speedily, effectually, finally. In our march to that end we must 
crush all intervening obstacles. If slavery, or any other " insti- 
tution," stands in the way, it must be removed. Perish all 
things else, the National life must be saved. My individual 
convictions of what may be needful are perhaps in advance of 
those entertained by some, and less radical than those conscien- 
tiously held by others. Whether they are the one or the other, 
liowever, I do not wish to see an attempt made to carry them 
out until it can be done by an Administration sustained by the 
resistless energy of the loyal masses. I thinJi myself those 
masses are rapidly adopting the idea that to smite the Rebellion 
its malignant cause must be smitten, and that to preserve the 
Union all agencies willing to work for its preservation must be 
freely and energetically used. That, I believe, is the conclusion 
which, in due time, the Nation will reach. Perhaps we are 
slow in coming to it, and it may be that we are even now re- 
ceiving our severe chastisement for not more readily accepting 
the teachings of Providence. But it was the tenth plague which 
softened the heart of Pharaoh and caused him to let the op- 
pressed go free. That plague was the sacrifice of the first-born 
in each household. With the sanguinary battle-fields of Vir- 
ginia whose records of death we are just reading, I ask you in 
the language of another, "How far off are we from that day 
when our households will have paid that penalty to offended 
Heaven ? " 



40 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



CAN THE COUNTRY SUSTAIN THE EXPENSE OF 
THE WAR AND PAY THE DEBT WHICH IT 
WILL INVOLVE? 



[Speech delivered by Mr. Blaine in the House of Eepresentatives of the 
United States, April 21, 1864.] 

Mr. Speaker, — The question of most engrossing interest 
to the loyal people of the United States, to-day, is whether we 
are able to furnish the means of carrying on the war, and to 
sustain the load of debt which the close of hostilities will leave 
upon us. I propose to show by some simple facts and figures 
that we are abundantly equal to the great trial, and that in 
bearing it we are assuming far less responsibility, in proportion 
to wealth, population, and prospective development, than has 
been successfully assumed in the past by another great nation, 
and even by ourselves at the organization of the Government. 

In estimating the debt with which we are to be encumbered, 
it is not wise, in my judgment, to adopt a too sanguine anti- 
cipation of the speedy close of the war. Many gentlemen, 
whose opinions the public are accustomed to respect, predict 
the entire suppression of the rebellion within the ensuing sum- 
mer. For myself I cannot indulge in so pleasing a prospect. 
Whatever false reckonings we may have made in the past in 
regard to the shortness of the war, I have latterly been of those 
who believe that the leading conspirators of the South intend at 
all events to prolong the struggle until the approaching contest 
for the Presidency is ended. They have a hope — baseless 
enough, it seems to us — that in some way they are to be bene- 
fited by the result of that election, and hence they will hold out 
until it is decided, with a view, indeed, of affecting its decis- 
ion. Let us not then deceive ourselves with regard to the 



SECRETARY CHASE'S DEBT ESTIMATES. 41 

speedy reduction of the enormous expenditures to which we are 
now subjected. It is wiser for us to look soberly at facts as 
they are, and not beguile ourselves with rose-colored views of 
facts as we wish they might be. Let us make our calculations 
in regard to the national debt, therefore, on the assumption that 
the war will last until July, 1865, instead of closing in July, 
1864, as has been so confidently assumed by many. Should 
it come to a termination earlier, our error will be the happiest 
feature in our entire calculation. 

Heretofore the estimates of the Secretary of the Treasury in 
regard to the amount of the national debt at any given period 
have proved surprisingly accurate. The safest feature of his 
estimates is seen in the fact that he has in no instance under- 
stated the prospective amount of indebtedness, as actually 
ascertained when we reached the date to which the estimate 
was made. For instance, in December, 1862, Mr. Chase stated 
that the debt, July 1, 1863, would be $1,122,297,403.24. 
When the time arrived, the debt amounted to $1,098,793,- 
181.37, or some twenty-four millions less than the Secretary 
had estimated. With fuller data for reckoning than when he 
made the calculation just referred to, the Secretary now esti- 
mates that if the war shall continue so long, at its current rate 
of cost, our debt in July, 1865, will reach the large sum of 
$2,231,935,190.37. To this vast amount let us add $150,000,000 
to be incurred by refunding to the loyal States their war ex- 
penses, and $150,000,000 more to cover unforeseen expenses in 
closing up the great contest, and you will have a grand total of 
twenty-five hundred millions of dollars^ the annual interest and 
ultimate redemption of which must be provided for by the 
nation. Besides contracting this enormous debt, we shall have 
expended all the current receipts of the Treasury in conducting 
the war, amounting in the aggregate, for the four years, to more 
than five hundred millions, making thus a gross outlay of over 
three thousand millions as the cost of subduing the rebellion — 
an expenditure of two millions per day from the inception to 
the close of the contest. 

Let us see how, by the experience of our own country in a 
former generation, as well as by the experience of another great 
people, we may hope to meet this burden with confidence and 



42 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

courage — bearing it without oppression when it is heaviest, 
and coming in good season to its total discharge, or by attain- 
ment of superior strength making it so light as to be practically 
disregarded. 

At the organization of our Government in 1789, the entire 
population, free and slave, was under four millions, scattered 
along the seaboard from the St. Croix to the St. Mary's, not 
fifty thousand in all living one hundred miles distant from the 
flow of the Atlantic tide. Facilities for intercommunication 
were greatly restricted, manufactures and the arts were in feeble 
infancy, agriculture was rude and not highly remunerative, 
because commerce, its handmaid, was languishing and waiting 
to be quickened to enterprise and vigor. The entire valuation 
of the thirteen States, according to the weight of authority, 
did not exceed six hundred millions of dollars — three hundred 
millions less than the valuation of Massachusetts to-day, and 
not one-half so great as that of Pennsylvania. Property at that 
time was ill adajjted to bear taxation, profits were small, and to 
the political economist, measuring the condition and capacity 
of the country, it seemed utterly unable to carry a debt of any 
considerable magnitude. And yet our ancestors did not hesi- 
tate to assume the burden of ninety millions of dollars — more 
than one-seventh of all the property they owned. Mr. Jefferson, 
who was the most distrustful of all the statesmen of that 
day in regard to the ability of the nation to sustain the load, 
was yet willing to say that it could be easily borne if our an- 
nual increase of property could maintain an average of five per 
cent — then the most sanguine estimate which any one dared to 
place on the future growth of the country. Had we realized 
only the ratio of increase assumed by Mr. Jefferson, our wealth 
in 1860 would have been twenty-seven hundred millions instead 
of sixteen thousand ndllions. Upon Mr. Jefferson's assumed 
basis of increase, the debt would never have been oppressive ; 
but with the rate of growth actually realized, tlie country paid 
the interest on the debt and accumulated a fund for its redemp- 
tion with such ease that the people never felt they were taxed. 
I hope to show that our debt at the close of this war will be 
relatively lighter than the debt which our Revolutionary fathers 
thus assumed, and proceeded so early and so easily to discharge. 



BRITISH NATIONAL DEBT. 43 

Look also at the case of Great Britain. At the ch^se of her 
prolonged struggle with Napoleon in 1815, the national debt of 
that kingdom amounted to X 861,000,000 sterling, or forty-three, 
hundred millions of dollars ; and for readier comparison I shall 
speak of her debt in dollars rather than in pounds. Her entire 
population at that time was less than twenty millions, and the 
valuation of her property for purposes of taxation was about 
nine thousand five hundred millions of dollars. She owed, in- 
deed, nearly half of all she possessed. Her population was less 
than two-tliirds of what ours is to-day. Her entire property 
was not three-fifths of what ours was according to the census 
of 1860, while her debt was eighteen hundred millions of dollars 
greater than ours will be in July, 1865. In contracting this 
debt she was compelled to sell her bonds at the most enormous 
sacrifice. From 1792 to 1815 her debt was increased three 
thousand millions of dollars ; yet in exchange for this amount 
of bonds she received in money but $1,730,000,000, thus submit- 
ting to a discount of 11,270,000,000. In other words, England, 
during the twenty-three years of Continental war, only realized 
on an average for the whole period, $100 in money in exchange 
for $173 of her bonds. This, be it remembered, was the aver- 
age for the whole time. As the contest waxed desperate, her 
sacrifices became desperate in proportion, and the money which 
enabled her to fight the decisive campaign of Waterloo was 
obtained by selling her bonds to the European bankers at less 
than fifty cents on the dollar. Compared with this our sacri- 
fices on the national securities have thus far been light, not 
averaging, from the inception of the war to the present day, 
with all elements of expenditure fairly estimated, more than 
from twenty to twenty-five per cent, reckoning on the gold 
basis. 

To meet their enormous debt, the British people had nothing 
but the commercial and industrial resources of the United 
Kingdom, whose whole area is not double that of the single 
State of Missouri. They had a population of but twenty mil- 
lions, as already stated, subject to no increase from immigra- 
tion, and growing in half a century no more than we have 
grown during the last decade. Yet on this restricted area, the 
enterprise and energy of the British people have increased their 



44 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

property, until it is valued at tliirty-three thousand millions of 
dollars ; and in defiance of the large expenditure resulting from 
several costly wars since 1815, they have actually reduced their 
debt some three hundred millions of dollars. Their steady 
progress in wealth under their large debt is comprehended in 
the statement that the average property per capita in 1815 was 
less than five hundred dollars, and in 1861 was about eleven 
hundred dollars. In 1815 some twenty-five per centum of all 
the earnings and income of the people was absorbed in taxation, 
and in 1861 less than ten per centum was taken for the same 
object. In 1815 the proportion of taxes per head for the whole 
people exceeded seventeen dollars, and in 1861 it had fallen 
below ten dollars. 

These brief details of British experience show how a great 
debt, without being absolutely reduced to any considerable ex- 
tent, becomes relatively lighter by the increased capacity to 
bear it. The wealth juer capita of the entire population in a 
period of forty-six years has more than doubled ; the aggregate 
property of the realm has more than trebled ; and all this on a 
fixed area of one hundred and twenty thousand square miles, 
and with a population increasing at the slow rate of only one 
per cent per annum. If such results can be wrought out by a 
kindred people, against such obstacles and hinderances, what 
may we not hope to accomplish under the ausj)icious circum- 
stances of our own Nation ! 

In the light of the national experiences we have been glancing 
at, we may clearly read our own great future. It is not, indeed, 
a matter of surmise or speculative inquiry, but of well-founded 
and confident calculation — a calculation whose only error will 
be in falling short of results actually to be realized. The war 
closing in July, 1865, will leave us in this condition : a nation 
numbering some thirty-three millions of people, owning over 
sixteen thousand millions of property, and carrying a debt 
of twenty-five hundred millions of dollars. The proportion 
between debt and property will be just about the same that 
it was when the Union was formed, while the ratio of our 
advance and the largely enhanced productiveness of agricul- 
tural, manufacturing and commercial pursuits gives the present 
generation an advantage that renders the debt far less bur- 



THE REVOLUTIONARY DEBT. 45 

densome at the very outset. If the Revolutionary debt became 
in a very brief period so light as to be unnoticed, why may we 
not, with a vastly accelerated ratio of progress, assume a similar 
auspicious result with regard to the debt we are now contract- 
ing? Were our future advance in wealth and population to be 
no more rapid than Great Britain's has been since 1815, we 
should at the close of the present century have a population 
of forty-five million souls, and a property amounting to fifty 
thousand millions of dollars. Even upon this ratio of progress 
our entire debt would cease to be felt as a burden. But upon 
the increase of population and development of wealth to be 
so confidently anticipated, the debt Avould be so small, in com- 
parison with the total resources of the nation, as to become 
absolutely inconsiderable. 

All that I have said has been based on the supposition of the 
debt remaining at a fixed sum, the country simply paying the 
interest. As a matter of fact, however, it is perfectly obvious 
that in the progress and prosperity of the future, one of our 
first acts will be to provide for the gradual but absolute 
redemption of the principal. That this will be consummated 
without oppressively adding to the annual burden of taxes 
may be inferred with certainty from a slight examination of our 
capacity to make increased payments proportioned to our in- 
creased amount of consolidated wealth. The time of redemp- 
tion will depend wholly on the will of the tax-payers, but it is 
evident that the condition of the country may justify its being 
done as rapidly as Mr. Hamilton proposed to redeem the debt 
which he funded in 1790. The period assigned by him was 
thirty-five years, and so well based were his calculations, that 
the entire debt, augmented largely and unexpectedly as it was 
by the war of 1812, was paid in forty-four years from the date 
of funding ; and in 1834 the United States found itself owing 
but thirty-seven thousand dollars. 

To those who may be disposed to doubt the future progress 
of our country according to the ratio assumed, a few familiar 
considerations in respect to our resources may be recalled with 
advantage. We occupy a territory at least three million square 
miles in extent, within a fraction as large as the whole of 



46 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Europe. Our habitable and cultivable area is, indeed, larger 
than that of all Europe, to say nothing of the superior fertility 
and general productiveness of our soil. So vast is our extent, 
that, though we may glibly repeat its numerical measure, we 
find it most difticult to form any just conception of it. The 
State of Texas alone is equal in area to the Empire of France 
and the Kingdom of Portugal united ; and yet these two mon- 
archies support a population of forty millions, while Texas has 
( but six hundred thousand inhabitants. Or, if we wish for a 
comparative measure nearer home, let me state that the area of 
Texas is greater than that of the six New England States, 
together with New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania and 
Ohio and Indiana combined. California, the second State in 
size, is equal in extent to the Kingdom of Spain and the King- 
dom of Belgium together. The land that is still in the hands 
of Government, not sold or even pre-empted, amounts to a 
thousand millions of acres — an extent of territory thirteen 
times as large as Great Britain, and equal in area to all the 
kingdoms of Europe, Russia and Turkey alone excepted. Mere 
territorial extent does not of course imply future greatness, 
though it is one requisite to it. In our case it is so vast an 
element that we may be pardoned for dwelling on it with 
emphasis and iteration. 

dombined with this great expanse of territory we have facil- 
ities for the acquisition and consolidation of wealth — varied, 
magnificent, and immeasurable. Our agricultural resources, 
bounteous beyond estimate, are, by the application of mechani- 
cal skill and labor-saving machinery, receiving a development 
each decade, which a century in the past would have failed 
to secure, and which a century in the future will place beyond 
all present power of computation — giving us so far the lead 
in the production of those staple articles essential to life and 
civilization that we become the arbiter of the world's destiny 
without aiming at the world's empire. The single State of 
Illinois, cultivated to its capacity, can produce as large a crop 
of cereals as has ever been grown within the limits of the 
United States ; while Texas, if peopled but half as densely as 
Maryland even, could give an annual return of cotton larger 
than the laroest that has ever been grrown in all the Southern 



ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL WEALTH. 47 

States combined. Our facilities for commerce and exchange, 
both domestic and foreign — who shall measure them? Our 
oceans, our vast inland seas, our marvelous flow of navigable 
streams, our canals, our network of railroads more than thirty 
thousand miles in extent, — these give us avenues of trade 
and channels of communication both natural and artificial, 
such as no other nation has ever enjoyed, and which tend to 
the production of wealth with a rapidity not to be measured 
by any standard of the past. The enormous field for manu- 
facturing industry in all its complex and endless variety — with 
our raw material, our wonderful motive-power both by water 
and steam, our healthful climate, our cheap carriage, our home 
consumption, our foreign demand — foreshadows a traftic whose 
magnitude and whose profit cannot now be estimated ! Our 
mines of gold and silver and iron and copper and lead and 
coal, with their untold and unimaginable wealth, spread over 
millions of acres of territory, in the valley, on the mountain 
side, along rivers, yielding already a rich harvest, are destined 
yet to increase a thousand-fold, until their every-day treasures, 

" familiar grown, 
Shall realize Orient's fabled wealth." 

These are the great elements of material progress ; and they 
comprehend the entire circle of human enterprise — Agriculture, 
Commerce, Manufactures, Mining. They assure to us an increase 
in property and population that will surpass the most sanguine 
deductions of our census tables, framed as those tables are upon 
the ratios and relations of our progress in the past. They give 
into our hands, under the blessing of Almighty God, the power 
to command our fate as a nation. They hold out to us the 
grandest future reserved for any people ; and with this promise 
they teach us the lesson of patience, and render confidence and 
fortitude a duty. With such amplitude and affluence of re- 
sources, and with such a vast stake at issue, we should be un- 
worthy of our lineage and our inheritance if we for one moment 
distrusted our ability to maintain ourselves a united people, 
with "one Country, one Constitution, one Destiny." 



48 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1864. — LINCOLN 
AGAINST McCLELLAN. 



[Speech of Mr. Blaine at a Republican meeting in Augusta, Sept. 5, 1864.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — I think we shall all agree that the con- 
test for the Presidency in which the American people are now 
engaged is marked by some extraordinary features. 

The Republicans are advocating the re-election of Mr. Lin- 
coln, who, with varying success, but with ceaseless devotion, 
has striven to subdue the enemies of the Union by military 
force, to which those enemies were, themselves, the first to 
appeal. The most malignant opponents of the President do not 
question his integrity, his earnestness, his zeal in the cause of 
the Union. They simply challenge the wisdom of his course. 

The Democrats have nominated an unsuccessful General of 
the Union Army, and their National Convention has placed him 
on a platform declaring the war to be a failure and demanding 
" a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention 
of all the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at 
the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the 
basis of the Federal Union of all the States." 

General McClellan is, I think, the only military man who 
ever ran for President of the United States on the explicit and 
declared basis of a capitulation. He runs as a military hero, 
and yet proposes to ground arms, withdraw our troops, acknowl- 
edge the war to be a failure, and see upon what terms of apolo- 
getic submission on the part of loyal men and Federal soldiers 
the rebels will agree to return to the Union as our masters. 

I think the members of the Democratic National Convention 
that nominated General McClellan and placed him on this peace 
platform deserve to be forever marked among their countrymen 



LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN. 49 

for lack of j)atriotism, for abandoiiineut of the primal instinct of 
self-respect, for subordination of every manly impulse. 

If, on this declared line of policy, the people of the United 
States elect General McClellan, we should apologize for the 
victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, forget the glories of the 
Chattanooga campaign, express regret for the valued achieve- 
ments of our Navy, recall Grant from the splendid campaign 
he is waging against Lee in Virginia, and rebuke Sherman for 
having driven back the enemy from Atlanta and conquered 
that stronghold by the decisive victory whose details we are 
just now reading in the daily journals. 

We have sacrificed thousands of valuable lives, have spent 
money by the thousands of millions, are pressing the rebellion to 
its final retreat, are exhausting its last resources ; and just when 
these Southern conspirators against the Union are in despair, 
the Democratic National Convention meets and, in the name of 
their great and once honored party, demands that the war shall 
cease, that our troops shall be withdrawn, and that the proud 
people of this Nation sliall stand hat in hand and wait in humili- 
ation and disgrace until the rebels prescribe the terms on which 
they will agree to govern us hereafter. 

I certainly do not envy the feelings of General iMcClellan 
when he surveys the position into which personal chagrin and 
anger and disappointment have placed him. I do not desire to 
speak with harshness or personal disrespect concerning him. 
He gained one victory for the Union at Antietam, and let him 
have ample credit for that. His fault was that he could not 
and would not be loyal to those who, charged with the admin- 
istration of the Federal Government, were his official superiors. 
He has been, from the beginning of his military career, disre- 
spectful to Mr. Lincoln and apparently incapable of appreciat- 
ing the great character, the simplicity, the earnestness, the 
determination, of that wonderful man. Towards Mr. Stanton, 
who speaks officially for the President, and Avho in ability as a 
war minister and in devotion to official duty has rarely been 
equaled in any country, General McClellan has been steadily, 
persistently and to the last degree insolent. 

After his great army on the Peninsula (the most superb and 
formidable that was ever organized on this continent) had been 



50 rOLITICAl. DISCUSSIONS. 

defeated by Lee and was lying at Harrison's Landing, General 
McClellan telegraphed to the Secretary of War: '■' If I save this 
Army now, I tell you plainly that I oive no thanks to you or to any 
persons in Washinyton. You have done your best to sacrifice this 
Army.'' It is an old maxim, fellow-citizens, tliat he only is fit 
to conniiand who has proven himself ready to obey ; and cer- 
tainly, by that test. General McClellan has no claim to be 
called to the rulership of the Ivepiiblic, to the great task of 
governing the people of United States. Suppose a Marshal 
of Napoleon had sent such a dispatch to the great Emperor — 
suppose one of the Generals of Frederick the Great had ven- 
tured to impute such conduct to that mighty commander — how 
long do you believe the author of such insubordination would 
have been allowed even to live ? Can any one doubt that Mr. 
Lincoln would have been justified in instantly cashiering Gen- 
eral McClellan, as the law authorized him to do, for this un])ar- 
alleled insubordination? 

That patient man, who is slow to anger and incapable of 
personal resentment, forgave General McClellan and held back 
the fiery wrath of Stanton, rather than run the risk of sowing 
factions in the army by meting out to McClellan his just and 
merited punishment. It requires an extraordinary degree of 
moral strength and self-control in a President of the United 
States to submit to such personal indignity as was attempted to 
be put upon Mr. Lincoln by General McClellan, without experi- 
encing a certain sense of self-humiliation and without incurring 
a certain loss of self-respect on the part of his best friends. But 
incidents of this character prove how lofty is the nature of Mr. 
Lincoln and how he keeps himself free from the ordinary pas- 
sions by which even great men are swayed beyond the confines 
of discretion. So far from losing dignity by not being forward 
to assert it he has constantly been more and more endowed with 
it. He has gained control over others by constantly maintain- 
ing it over himself and has established the highest standard of 
personal and official bearing by refraining from the pettiness of 
resentment and being too magnanimous to indulge in revenge. 

Let us contemplate for a moment the probable consequences 
of the programme to which the Northern Democrats now in- 
vite us. Does any man doubt that, if the policy, of which 



LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN. 51 

General McClellau is ready to stand as the representative, should 
triumph, the rebels would be able to establish their Confederacy? 
How, after grounding arms, humiliating the Union, ceasing to 
struggle, are you going to raise the war spirit again, in the event 
of the rebels refusing to come into the Union on any terms? 
This resolution of the Democratic Convention, it is true, de- 
clares that the war is to cease on " the basis of the Federal 
Union." Suppose the rebels say, that they prefer to have their 
Confederacy : how are you going to be able to resist them ? 
You would practically have disbanded your military strength, 
while the courage and confidence of the enemy's forces would 
have been trebled by the prestige gained from the retreat and 
practical surrender of the Union Army. 

If the rebels should insist upon their own separate Con- 
federacy, does any man believe that the remaining States could 
continue to live in harmony and in union ? Would not strifes 
and contentions, without number, at once spring up ? The 
Border States would certainly be convulsed with a fierce contest 
as to which section they would adhere to ; and, with the strong 
incentive of maintaining the institution of slavery, who doubts 
which way they would go? Would not the Pacific slope, in 
order to escape the dangers and embroilments which it could 
neither control nor avoid, naturally seek for independence — 
protected, as that section would be, on one side by a great chain 
of mountains and on the other by a broad ocean ? The North- 
West, if it did not follow the example of secession, would 
demand such a reconstruction of the Government of the 
remaining States as would injuriously affect every interest of 
the East and North-East. In short, disunion upon the line 
of the revolted States would involve the speedy disintegra- 
tion of the Federal Government, We should find ourselves 
launched on a sea of troubles, with no pilot capable of holding 
the helm and no chart to guide us on our perilous voyage. 

But let us suppose that the rebels would agree, in response 
to this invitation of the Democratic National Convention, ap- 
proved by popular vote, to return to their rightful allegiance. 
Would they not practically be in a position to demand and en- 
force their own terms ? Would they not ask, and receive, such 
guaranties of slavery as would fasten that institution, for all 



52 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

time, upon the United States, giving it free access to all the 
Territories and guarding it as a National institution at every 
point? If the North should present itself saddled and bridled, 
for the South booted and spurred, to mount, do you think they 
would ride mercifully? Would they not despise the craven 
spirit, the cringing cowardice, which impelled such action on 
the part of the loyal people ? and would they not feel sure that 
having gone so far in the path of humiliation as the election of 
McC'lellan would imply, they could lay no burden upon our 
back which Ave would not bear, and exact no condition, however 
degrading, with wdiich we would not comply ? 

It is difficult, I know, fellow-citizens, to speak of this issue 
with cool head, with measured words, in the language of argu- 
ment. We are stirred too much with hot indignation to con- 
sider the rules of logic, to wait for the slow recital of facts, to 
ask you even to listen to any thing but angry denunciation of 
the Democratic position. Every man knows by instinct, with- 
out going through the process of demonstration, that the prose- 
cution of the war is the only line of safety for the Union, and 
that, as Wellington said in his famous Peninsular campaign, 
'' the prosecution of war is, after all, the process of exhaustion 
of the enemy." The Government of the Union is still strong, 
full of resources, of money, of men, of material, rich now in ex- 
perience, with veterans in the ranks to the number of a million, 
with generals who have become great in the science of war from 
experience in the held. Our manufactures are prosperous, the 
oceans of the world are open to our commerce, our people have 
never even considered that the fate of the Government could 
be critical, they have never even approached the borders of 
despair. 

How is it with the rebels? We know their situation almost 
as well as though we had daily bulletins from the centre of 
their government and from the headquarters of their armies. 
They are already greatly reduced; they daily grow weaker; 
their ports are blockaded; they can get no help from other 
nations; they cannot clothe their troops; they cannot supply 
shoes to the footsore soldiers who have marched and fought so 
well. We have cut the Confederacy in two, and practically 
detached the resources of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas from 



LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN. 53 

the Richmond Government. Grant is in the heart of Virginia 
with a contXLiering host ; while Sherman, with a triumphant 
army, is resting quietly in the centre of the cotton States, study- 
ing which way he may move with deadliest effects upon the 
resources of the Confederacy. Every thing portends success to 
our arms, and that speedily. Our only danger is in the rear, 
from the Democratic party, who are rushing to the defense of 
the Confederacy as though they desired, above all things, to 
interpose their strong arm to save it from being finally crushed 
and destroyed under the iron hoof of war. 

I know it is a common saying at each quadrennial election 
that it is the most important one the people have ever been 
called upon to decide ; but if this has been lightly said before, 
I think it may now be declared with absolute truth. We have 
all felt, and many of us have publicly said, that the rebels 
would strain the last nerve to sustain the Confederacy through 
the Presidental campaign, with the blind hope, which has now 
become visible and palpable by the action of the Democratic 
party, that something would happen to their advantage. They 
Avait now, not upon the fortunes of war, but upon the decision 
at the ballot-boxes in the loyal States of the Union. They 
know that the election of McClellan will save them from the 
just consequences of their rebellion against the Union, and 
will practically make them arbiters of their own destiny, mas- 
ters of the National situation. We know, and they know, 
that the re-election of Mr. Lincoln means a collapse of tlie 
rebel armies, the dispersion of their troops, the restoration of 
the National flag over all their territory, and the re-establish- 
ment of the Union, purified by war, relieved from the blot of 
slavery, and strengthened for all the future by the awful ex- 
perience of these years of blood. Whatever doubt may attend 
the election in other States, I know that we can trust implicitly 
to the loyalty and the courage of Maine. Governor Sej^mour 
may try to confuse the issue in New York, the Knights of the 
Golden Circle will relax no effort in their determination to 
carry Indiana against the National Administration ; but I be- 
lieve their efforts will be in vain, for, after all, it is incon- 
ceivable that a majority of the citizens of these loyal States can 
be blinded to National pride, to a sense of their own interest, 



54 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

to the degrading humiliation to which the Democratic National 
Convention has invited the country. 

I do not deny, my fellow-citizens, that I covet the honor of a 
re-election to Congress. It is a matter of especial pride and 
ambition to be a member of the House of Representatives at this 
great epoch in the history of our country. But I should hang 
my head in shame and wish to be released from the mortifica- 
tion of sitting in Congress, if a majority of the members to be 
elected should approve the surrender of the proud position of 
the Nation which would be involved in the election of General 
McClellan. If there was a possibility of that National humili- 
ation, I should ask to be excused even from being a witness, 
and should return to you, if re-elected, the credentials with 
which you would entrust me. But I have no fear of such a 
residt. The National spirit is daily rising ; the National pride 
is touched ; the sense of National honor is awakened. The 
House of Representatives for which I am a candidate will, I am 
sure, contain a majority, a large majority, of men loyal to the 
Union, proud of the achievements of our armies, zealous in 
support of Mr. Lincoln's Administration. 

On Monday next we have our duty to discharge in Maine, 
and the distinguished gentleman from the Keystone State 
[Judge William D. Kelley], who has already spoken from this 
platform, will carry back to his loyal constituency the news of 
a great triumph, to which he has in no small degree contributed 
by his arguments and his eloquence. Maine speaks among the 
first States, and her voice has an importance far beyond her 
numerical strength. Let each Republican voter feel, therefore, 
that the duty devolved upon him is something more than 
belongs to him as a citizen of Maine. Let him remember that 
he is to speak for the loyalty of the North, and that his voice 
can influence other men, to the utmost bounds of the Republic. 



thp: financial problem. 55 



FUTILITY OF ATTEMPTING TO EQUALIZE GOLD, 
SILVER, AND PAPER MONEY BY LEGISLATION. 



[Remarks of Mr. Blaine in the House of Representativos, Dec. 7, 18G4.] 

Mr. Speaker, — I move to reconsider the vote whereby the 
House yesterday referred to the Committee of Ways and Means 
a bill introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Thaddeus Stevens], "to prevent gold and silver coin and 
bullion from being paid or exchanged for a greater value than 
their real current value, and for preventing auy note or bill 
issued by the United States, and made lawful money and a legal 
tender, from being received for a smaller sum than is therein 
specified." I believe, Mr. Speaker, that this bill has been pro- 
ductive of great mischief in the brief twenty-four hours that 
it has been allowed to float before the public mind as a meas- 
ure seriously entertained by this House. I believe that still 
more mischief will ensue every day and every hour the House 
stands committed to such legislation, even by the motion of 
courtesy which refers the bill to a committee. The provisions 
of the bill are very extraordinary, and but for the respect I feel 
for the distinguished gentleman who introduced it, I should say 
they were absurd and monstrous. Let me read two or three of 
these provisions : — 

" 2. That a dollar note issued by the Government, declared lawful money 

and legal tender, is declared of equal value for all purposes as gold and silver 

coin of like denomination. 

.1 "3. That a contract made payable in coin may be payable in legal-tender 

^United States notes, and that no difference in sale or value shall be allowed 

between them. 

" 5. That no person shall by any device, shift or contrivance receive or 
pay, or contract to receive or pay, any Treasury or other note issued by the 
United States for circulation as money, and declared legal tender, for less 
than their lawfully expressed value; and any offender, upon conviction, shall 
suffer imprisonment not exceeding six months, and a fine equal to the full 
amount of the sum specified in said note. 



56 POLITICAL DLSCUSSIONS. 

"6. That if any person shall, in the purchase or sale of gold or silver coin 
or bullion, agree to receive in jiayinent notes of corporations or individuals 
at less than par value, lie shall be deemed to have offended against the 
provisions of this act, and shall be punished accordingly." 

\/ 1 forbear to recite the remainder of the hill. I have read 
enough to show, that if it should become a law. the entire pop- 
ulation on the Pacific coast would be liable to indictment and 
conviction for a criminal offense simply because they will per- 
sist in believing that in tlie present condition of our currency a 
gold dollar is worth more than a paper dollar. Not limiting 
the scope of the bill to the protection of Government currency, 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania still further proposes to 
punish, as for a misdemeanor, any one who shall agree to sell 
gold and receive in payment " notes of corporations or individ- 
uals at less than par value." 

/ The whole bill, sir, aims at what is simply impossible. You 
/ cannot by a Congressional enactment make a coin dollar worth 
I less than it is, or a paper dollar worth more than it is. I 
think we had experience enough in that direction with the 
famous gold bill at the last session. We passed that measure 
after a very severe pressure, and with great promises as to the 
wonders it would work in Wall Street. It continued on the 
statute-book for some twelve days — gold advancing at a rapid 
rate every day until its repeal was effected. The bill now 
under consideration has already had a most pernicious effect ; 
and should it become a law, no man can measure the degree of 
its hurtful influence. It is for these reasons that I desire to 
have its reference reconsidered. 

In regard to the specific line of argument used by the chair- 
man of Ways and Means to justify this extraordinary measure, 
let me say, Mr. Speaker, that I have read English history on 
this subject with different conclusions from those so confidently 
expressed by him. My impression is that the well-weighed 
judgment, the deliberate conclusion of the British people was 
and is, that such prohibitory statutes as the gentlemaii has 
cited have no favorable effect upon the price of gohlLJ That 
they did not have a prejudicial and disastrous offoct in England, 
is due to the existence of other powerful causes whose opera- 



CREATING VALUES BY LEGISLATION. 57 

tioii and effect were most beneficent. Those causes lor the de- 
cline and continued low price of gold are found, sir, in the fact 
that the British Parliament raised by taxation half, and some- 
times more than half, of the total amount annuall}^ expended in 
her fierce struggle with Napoleon, and British arms were at the 
same time crowned with a series of brilliant and decisive victo- 
ries. Indeed, the gentleman from Pennsylvania himself, some- 
Avhat unconsciously perhaps, admits the whole force of my 
position on this point ; for he states that eight years before the 
English people resumed specie payment (in 1823), the premium 
on sold had fallen to a mere nominal rate. I admit it, sir ; and 
I ask the honorable gentleman, what brought it there ? Uncon- 
sciously, as I have said, the gentleman named the precise date 
of the battle of Waterloo, and the British victory on that mem- 
orable field was the cause of gold ruling low in London in 1815. 
By the battle of Waterloo England's supremacy was estab- 
lished : she had broken and beaten all coalitions against her, 
and w^as confessedly mistress on land and sea. It was her 
strong military and naval position and her resolute system of 
finance that raised the value of her bonds and brought down 
the price of gold. It was not her prohibitory legislation at 
all : no intelligent minister of finance, no English liistorian 
worthy of credit, has ever stated that it was. 

Let us, sir, imitate England in raising our credit by wdse 
legislation here, and by continued victories in the field. If we 
could raise half of our expenses by taxation, and could add to 
our many triumphs on land and sea a Waterloo victory over 
the hosts of the rebellion, we should need no such legislation 
as the gentleman has proposed to keep down the price of gold. 
When w^e reach that happy period of final triumph, the gentle- 
man's bill, if enacted, might prove harmless ; but until then its 
manifest effect can only be injurious to the cause it seeks to 
serve. 

[Note. — The bill was recalled from the Committee of Ways aiad Means, aad 
laid on the table.] 



58 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



NEW BASIS OF REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS. 



[Remarks of Mr. Blaine in the House of Representatives, Jan, 8, 1866.] 

Mr. Speaker, — Since the beginning of the present session 
we have had several propositions to amend the Federal Consti- 
tution with respect to the basis of representation in Congress. 
These propositions have differed somewhat in phrase, but they 
all embrace substantially the one idea of making suffrage, in- 
stead of population, the basis of apportioning representatives ; 
in other words, to give to the States in future a representation 
proportioned to their voters instead of their inhabitants. 

The effect contemplated and intended by this change is per- 
fectly well understood, and on all hands frankly avowed. It is 
to deprive the lately rebellious States of the unfair advantage 
of a large representation in this House, based on their colored 
population, so long as that poj^ulation shall be denied political 
rights by the legislation of those States. The proposed amend- 
ment would simply say to those States, that so long as they 
refuse to enfranchise their black population, they shall have 
no representation based on their numbers ; but admit them to 
civil and political rights, and they shall at once be counted 
to their advantage in the apportionment of representatives. 

The direct object thus aimed at, as it respects the rebellious 
States, has been so generally approved that little thought seems 
to have been given to the incidental evils which the proposed 
Constitutional amendment would inflict on certain loyal States. 
As an abstract proposition no one will deny that population is 
the true basis of representation ; for women, children, and 
other non-voting classes may have as vital an interest in the 
legislation of the country as those who actually deposit the 
ballot. Indeed, the very amendment we are discussing implies 



RATIO OF VOTES TO POPULATION. 59 

that population is the true basis, inasmuch as the exclusion of 
the black people of the South from political rights has sug- 
gested this indirectly coercive mode of securing those rights 
to them. Were the negroes to be enfranchised throughout 
the South to-day, no one would insist on the adoption of this 
amendment ; and yet if the amendment shall be incorporated 
in the Federal Constitution, its incidental evils will abide in 
the loyal States long after the direct evil which it aims to cure 
may have been eradicated in the Southern States. 

If voters instead of population shall be made the basis of 
representation, certahi results will follow, not fully appreciated 
perhaps by some who are now urgent for the change. I will 
confine my examination of these results to the free States. 
The ratio of voters to population varies widely in different sec- 
tions, ranging from a minimum of nineteen 'per cent to a maxi- 
mum of fifty-eight per cent ; and the changes which this fact 
would work in the relative representation of certain States 
would be monstrous. For example, California has a popula- 
tion of 358,110, and Vermont 314,369, and each has three 
representatives on this floor to-day ; but California cast 207,000 
votes, in electing her three representatives, and Vermont cast 
87,000. Assuming voters as the basis of apportionment, and 
allowing to Vermont three representatives, California would 
be entitled to eight. The great State of Ohio, with nearly 
seven times the population of California, would have but little 
more than two and a half times the number of representatives ; 
and New York, with quite eleven times the population of Cali- 
fornia, would have in the new style of apportionment less than 
five times as many members of this House. California it may 
be said presents an extreme case, but no more so than will 
continually recur for the next century under the stimulus to 
the emigration of young voters from the older States to the 
inviting fields of the Mississippi valley and the Pacific slope. 

There is no need, Mr. Speaker, of precipitating this evil of 
inequality among States, in order to cure the evil complained 
of. The Constitution may be amended so as to prevent the 
one evil without involving others of greater magnitude, and I 
venture to express the belief that the proposition submitted by 



60 I'0LITI(\\1> DISCUSSIONS. 

me this morning will, if adopted, secure the desired residt. 
Let me briefly explain that proposition. 

The Constitution of the United States, article one, section 
two, clause three, reads as folloAvs to the first period • — 

" Ecpresentatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several 
States which may be included within this Union according to their respective 
numbers, w Inch shall be determined by (addiiuj to the whole number of free 
persons, includinii those hound to service for a term of years, and excluding In- 
dians not taxed, three-fifths of all other per sons.) " 

Tlie portion which I have included in parentheses has become 
meaningless and nugatory by the adoption of the Constitutional 
amendment which abolishes the distinction between "free per- 
sons " and " all other persons," and being thus a dead letter 
might as well be formally struck out. In its stead I propose 
to insert the words following included in parentheses, so that 
the clause as amended would read thus : — 

" Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several 
States which may be included within this Union according to their respective 
numbers, which shall be determined by (taking the whole number of persons, 
except those to whom civil or political right^s or privileges are denied or 
abridged by the Constitution or laws of any State oh account of race or 
color.)" 

This is a very simple and very direct way, it seems to me, 
of reaching the desired result without embarrassment to any 
other question or interest. It leaves population, as heretofore, 
the basis of representation, does not disturb in any manner the 
harmonious relations of the loyal States, and it conclusively 
deprives the Southern States of all rei^resentation in Congress 
on account of the colored population, so long as those States 
may choose to abridge or deny to that population the political 
rights and privileges accorded to others. 

[Note. —Mr. Blaine's brief speech was the first arguraeut made in the Thirty- 
ninth Congress against the plan of basing representation on voters.] 



THE RECONSTRUCTION PROBLEM. 61 



THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT AS A BASIS 
OF RECONSTRUCTION. 



[Speech of Mr. Blaine at a Republican mass meeting in Skowhegan, Maine, 
Aug. 29, 180G.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — The questions which seemed most press- 
ing at the close of the war last year, and which for a time de- 
manded the largest share of popular attention, related to the 
finances of the nation, to the adjustment of our currency, to 
the funding of our large public debt. These have since been 
overshadowed by the question of Reconstruction, or, rather, by 
the dispute which has ensued between the President and Con- 
gress as to the terms upon which the States lately in rebellion 
should be re-admitted to the right of representation in Congress, 
and to that full rehabilitation, as members of the Union, which 
for four years they struggled to be freed from. 

At the outset it appeared as if the difference between the 
President and Congress, which rapidly ran into a decisive quar- 
rel between the two, would prove a public calamity ; but latterly 
it has seemed that this very divergence of views, this conflict of 
authority, will lead to a more radical and more lasting settle- 
ment of all the issues that grew out of the war, than would have 
been reached if the President and Congress had hastily agreed 
upon the terms for re-admitting the Southern States. Conflicts 
in the moral world and conflicts in the political world often 
result in great good ; and I am enough of an optimist to believe 
that the present struggle, based, as we must presume it to be, 
on an honest difference of opinion between the Executive and 
Legislative departments, will lead to a broader affirmation of 
human rights, a more equitable adjustment of the relations of 
the two sections, a more effective guaranty of the liberties and 



62 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

the rights of those who have so recently been emancipated from 
chattel slavery. 

I think a great deal of valuable time and a great deal of 
useless effort have been expended in Congress upon abstract 
questions which really are of no value whatever in the final 
settlement of the grave problems now at issue. The Congren- 
sional- Crlohe of the late session is laden down with discussions 
as to the exact present status of the late insurrectionary States, 
and tlie disputants have argued the question with all the zeal 
and all the ability of those ancient theologians who waxed 
warm over theses the very meaning of which is now forgotten, 
or, if remembered, makes no impression whatever upon the 
creeds of the Christian world. Two great theories have been 
maintained respecting these States. The first, which is the 
foundation of President Johnson's theory of Reconstruction, 
is that the States were never out of the Union, that they 
never ceased to be members of the Union, that their rights 
under the Constitution remain unimpaired. The second, which 
may be called the Congressional basis of Reconstruction, as 
many present it, is that these States, if not out of the Union, 
have at least by their own acts of secession and rebellion lost 
their Statehood, if they be not, indeed, reduced to the condi- 
tion of Territories ; and that it rests with Congress to deter- 
mine whether they shall be re-admitted to representation in 
Senate and House, when they shall be re-admitted, and the 
terms upon which they shall be re-admitted. 

I do not believe that the time is profitably spent which is 
given to debating these abstract questions, nor do I believe 
that, in the end, these theories affect, one way or the other, the 
actual legislation which has for the time become the basis of 
Reconstruction. The large majority of the members of Con- 
gress have taken no great part in these opposing speculative 
^ l::ns, but have rather agreed with the position taken by Mr. 
Lincoln in the last speech he ever made, in which he gave a 
faint foreshadowing of his own views of Reconstruction. Al- 
luding to this very question as to whether the States were still 
in the Union, or had placed themselves outside of it, Mr. Lin- 
coln declared that " it is not practically a material issue," and 
that any discussion of it could have " no other effect than the 



MR. LINCOLN'S VIEW OF RECONSTRUCTION. 63 

mischievous one of dividing friends." In his own quaint way 
Mr. Lincoln defined wliat to liim had " always seemed the exact 
status of the case." " We all agree," said he, " that the seceded 
States are out of their proper, practical relation with the Union, 
and that the sole object of the Government is to get them back 
into their proper, practical relation. I believe it is easier to do 
this without deciding, or even considering, whether these States 
have ever been out of the Union. The States finding them- 
selves once more at home, it would seem immaterial to me to 
inquire whether they had ever been abroad." 

Leaving out of sight all theories, therefore. Congress finally 
came to a decision which I think the overwhelming majority 
of voters in the loyal States will approve. We said, in effect, 
to these rebel States, that having withdrawn their representa- 
tives from Congress and fought for four years to destroy the 
very existence of the National Government, we intend now to 
impose certain conditions upon them before they shall be re- 
admitted to representation in Senate and House. We said, in 
effect, to the Southern people, that we do not intend to be hard 
or exacting upon them : we do not intend to use the power that 
is in our hands to humiliate or degrade them. On the contrary, 
we intend to deal with them in a more magnanimous and generous 
manner than ever rebels were dealt with since civil government 
was established among men. We are willing to forget all that 
they have done : we cast out of our memories the lives that 
have been lost, the property that has been destroyed, the fright- 
ful distress that has been created, in consequence of their rebel- 
lion. It is better that it be all forgotten and in the bosom of 
the deep ocean buried. We do not deal with them in a spirit 
of revenge : we inflict nothing upon them for the past, beyond 
what is needful for the safety of the future, — for it is only to 
the future that we now look. 

In the first place, we ask that they will agree to certain 
changes in the Constitution of the United States ; and, to begin 
with, we want them to unite with us in broadening the citizen- 
ship of the Republic. The slaves recently emancipated by 
proclamation, and subsequently by Constitutional Amendment, 
have no civil status. They should be made citizens. We do 
not, by making them citizens, make them voters, — we do not, 



G4 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

ill this Constitutional Amcndnient, attempt to force tlicm upon 
Southern white men as equals at the ballot-box ; but we do 
intend that they shall be admitted to citizenship, that they sliall 
have the i^rotection of the laws, that they shall not, any more 
than the rebels shall, be deprived of life, of libert}', of i)ropertv, 
irltJiout due process of latv, and that "they shall not be denied 
Ihe equal protection of the law." And in making this exten- 
sion of citizenship, we are not confinhig the breadth and scope 
of our efforts to the negro. It is for the white man as well. 
We intend to make citizenship National. Heretofore, a man 
has been a citizen of tlie United States because he was a citizen 
of some one of the States: now, we propose to reverse tliat, and 
make him a citizen of any State where he chooses to reside, by 
defining in advance his National citizenship — and our Amend- 
ment declares that "all persons born or naturalized in the 
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens 
of the United States and of the States wherein they reside." 
This Amendment will prove a great beneficence to this gener- 
ation, and to all who shall succeed us in the rights of American 
citizenship ; and Ave ask the people of the revolted States to 
consent to this condition as an antecedent step to their re- 
admission to Congress with Senators and Representatives. 

But that is not all we ask. The white people of the South 
have heretofore had, as we in the North have thought, an unfair 
advantage, in counting their property in the basis of represen- 
tation against the flesh and blood of the North. They have 
always insisted that slaves were property, — as much as horses 
or mules or lands, — and they have been ready to fly into a 
passion and to commit violence against any one who disputed 
that proposition ; and yet when our Federal Government was 
formed they insisted that three-fifths of all the persons that con- 
stituted this property should be included in the basis of repre- 
sentation in Congress. They have thus had an unfair advantage 
in every Congress that has assembled from the inauguration of 
George Washington to the outbreak of the Rebellion. Tlie 
negroes are now free men, and instead of three-fifths entering 
into the basis of representation, the South will have the benefit 
of the whole mass, the entire five-fifths ; and 3^et the Southern 
white men do not propose to allow a single one of these millions 



FAIR BASIS OF REPRESENTATION. 65 

of colored men to vote. This Constitutional Amendment which 
we are proposing does not command that the Southern vStates 
shall permit the colored man to vote. At what time they shall 
advance him to suffrage, in what manner they shall advance 
him to suffrage, this Constitutional Amendment leaves to their 
own discretion. It simply says that until they do clothe the 
colored man with the power to vote, they shall not include hinij 
in the basis of representation. 

I ask you now, my fellow-citizens, if that proposition is not 
an absolutely fair and equitable one to the white men of the 
South ? I have never met a supporter of Mr. Lincoln's Admin- 
istration, even of those most conservative, who was not ready to 
declare that the system of Reconstruction thus proposed is not 
only just to the white population of the South, but generous ? 
— In truth it consults the prejudices of the white population 
of the South even farther than is just to the colored men, all 
of whom were loyal to the Union, and many of whom fought 
for its preservation. A great many of our Northern people, a 
very large proportion, I know, of my own constituents in this 
Kennebec District, find fault with the proposed Fourteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution, for the very reason that it 
does not directly confer suffrage upon the colored man. Our 
recent Republican State Convention adopted a resolution unani- 
mously declaring that all men, without regard to race, creed, or 
color, should be declared equal in civil and political rights ; and 
I know that while I stand here urging the adoption of the 
Fourteenth Amendment, I am asking them, in the once derided 
language of Mr. Webster, to " conquer their prejudices " and 
take the Fourteenth Amendment precisely as it is submitted for 
ratification. 

Proceeding to the next provision of the Constitutional 
Amendment, we say, in effect, to these Southern men that we 
do not intend to prosecute them or make any attempt to punish 
them. The war is over, and we shall not disturb the peace 
now reigning, by any " bloody assizes " in the South. A practi- 
cal amnesty exists, and those who took part in the rebellion are 
free from all danger of the law. But, at the same time, we do 
not intend, if we can help it, that the men who had been mem- 
bers of Congress, who had served in State Legislatures, who 



Q6 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

had been officers under the United States or any one of the 
States, and took a solemn personal oath to obey and defend the 
Constitution and then forswore themselves and rushed into 
the rebellion, shall come back to the councils of the Nation until 
two-thirds of Congress shall declare that they may have that 
privilege. As for the great mass of the Southern men who 
went into the war, they are perfectly free to hold any office to 
which they may be chosen, — just as free as Northern men, — 
so far as this Constitutional Amendment affects them. We 
aim the exclusion only at the class who are special, conscious 
offenders, and the aggregate of this class is as nothing com- 
pared with the whole number who engaged in the rebellion. 
Careful calculation shows that these disabilities for civil ser- 
vice will not affect more than fourteen thousand citizens in 
the entire South, out of the millions that were engaged in 
insurrection. 

We have still a fourth condition to impose upon the Southern 
States. The war for the preservation of the Union cost a vast 
sum of money. It was advanced largely by our own people, 
but in part was borrowed in Europe. All citizens who loaned 
to the Government in the hour of its distress took an honorable 
and patriotic risk ; all foreigners who loaned us money trusted 
to a National honor that has never been tarnished ; and the faith 
of the Nation is pledged to the fair and strict repayment of both 
citizen and alien, on terms that are nominated in the bonds 
which each received. The loyal men who control Congress do 
not intend that this debt shall be left in such position that an 
adverse majority in the Senate and House may at any time 
Avithhold payment, or even threaten to do so ; and therefore we 
bind up the rights of the public creditor in the organic law of 
the land, and declare that " the validity of the })ublic debt shall 
never be questioned." More than that, a large amount of this 
debt was incurred in the payment of pensions and bounties for 
soldiers, and we throw around that, also, the muniments of the 
Constitution, declaring that it stands out and beyond the power 
of a majority in both Houses to change. 

We are not yet through with these conditions for the South- 
ern States. One or two more still remain. The Government 
of the Confederate States, so called, issued bonds and incurred 



CONDITIONS IMPOSED ON REBEL STATES. 67 

a public debt, and the separate States that composed the Con- 
federacy did tlie same, — all in support of the war against the 
Union. The people who advanced money on these bonds de- 
serve to lose it. They deserve to lose it if they were citizens 
of the rebellious States: they still more deserve to lose it if, 
as aliens, honorably bound not to 'aid in destroying our National 
life, they invested their money in these securities whose value 
was based upon the hope and the expectation of overthrowing 
the American Union. We now bind it down by a Constitu- 
tional Amendment, that " no State of this Union," or the United 
States, if that were possible to conceive, " shall ever pay any 
debt or obligation of any kind incurred in aid of insurrection 
or rebellion." 

One step farther, still. It was necessary for the safety of 
the Union to destroy the institution of slavery, as a war meas- 
ure, justified by the law of Nations, — an act made perfect by 
the amended organic law of the Republic. There may be some 
danger that, as years go by, the people of the South who were in 
rebellion, feeling the loss of their slaves and, perhaps, the pov- 
erty and hardship that resulted from that loss, will ask for some 
remuneration from the conquering Government. Aside from 
the injustice of the demand, the attempt to pay it might imperil 
the National debt, which is due by every obligation of honor, 
and therefore the Congress of the United States has deemed it 
wise to insert in the Constitution that " no claim for the loss 
or emancipation of any slave shall ever be paid by any State 
Government or by the National Government, but shall forever 
be held to be illegal and void." 

And then we asked, although it was, perhaps, implied without 
the asking, that Congress shall reserve to itself, as part of this 
Amendment to the organic law of the Republic, the power " to 
enforce, by appropriate legislation," every one of its provisions. 

These several provisions which I have thus somewhat elabo- 
rately detailed, constitute the proposed Fourteenth Amendment 
to the Constitution of the United States. This could only be 
proposed to the States, as you well know, by two-thirds of each 
branch of Congress. As matter of fact, it received three- 
fourths in the Senate and even a larger proportion in the House, 
— the vote in the Senate being 33 ayes to 11 noes^ and in the 



68 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

House 120 ayes to 32 wog.s. It is now before the States of this 
Union for ratification or rejection, and the one important thing 
for the people of Maine to look to is the election of a Legisla- 
ture which will ratify. All the loyal States, together, ratifying 
it will not embody it in the Constitution. The theory has been 
maintained by some of the more extreme men of the Repub- 
lican party that three-fourths of the States required by the 
Constitution to ratify the Amendment, should under present 
circumstances properly mean three-fourths of the loyal States ; 
but the general, and I think the wiser, conclusion of the party 
has been to adhere to the ratification of three-fourths of all the 
States of the Union as required by the letter of the Consti- 
tution. If we secure three-fourths of all the States the validity 
of the Amendment can never be questioned, but if we should 
attempt to proceed on the theory that three-fourths of the loyal 
States are all that are required, we might find great trouble in 
the future when the possible changes of political fortune should 
bring our opponents into power. 

Discarding this theory and adhering to the old ways, the 
situation stands thus, viz. : the Southern States uniting with 
the Northern States in incorporating in the Constitution the 
provisions I have set before you, shall be re-admitted to all their 
former rights of representation in Congress, and shall be re- 
clothed with all the power of a State in the Union. I do not 
mean that Congress has given a specific pledge to that effect, 
but I do mean that such is the general understanding, — an 
understanding already made ex[)licit and practical by the admis- 
sion of Tennessee immediately after her ratification of the Four- 
teenth Amendment. The Legislature of that State was in 
session when the Amendment was finally passed by Congress, 
and ratified it without delay. Immediately thereafter. Con- 
gress, by an overwhelming vote, larger, I believe, in both 
branches than that by which the Amendment itself was adopted, 
re-admitted Tennessee to all her ancient rights in the Union. 
It is needless, of course, to say that Congress stands ready to 
treat in the same manner any other Southern State which is 
ready to follow the example of Tennessee. It is not improb- 
able, therefore, if wise councils prevail throughout the South, 
that the entire Union will be restored before the expiration 



POSSIBLE WRONG TO COLORED MEN. 69 

of the Thirty-ninth Congress, and Representatives will be ad- 
mitted as soon as the new apportionment, consequent upon the 
new basis of representation, can be completed. 

At the same time, it is onl}^ fair to state that if the more 
extreme of the Secession States shall refuse to accept the 
conditions now offered. Congress will not stand still and wait 
the processes of delay and postponement which certain Southern 
leaders think may wear out the patience of the North and 
carry this whole question into the Presidential election two 
years hence. A large proportion of the House of Representa- 
tives and of the Senate desired to make more stringent condi- 
tions than are contained in the Fourteenth Amendment. The 
Journals of both branches of Congress will show how many 
radical provisions were defeated, and if now, in turn, the more 
conservative provisions that are submitted shall be defeated 
in the South, the authors of the radical policy will gain great 
prestige and influence in the councils of the Nation. There are 
many men who believe that we do a wrong, not only to the 
colored man, but to the future of the country, by declining to 
exact suffrage for him as one of the conditions of Reconstruc- 
tion. But the more moderate policy prevailed, and the question 
is left to the wisdom and sound judgment of the leading race 
in the South, with a penalty of decreased representation, which 
in my judgment will in time force the South to concede suffrage 
to the colored man. Perhaps a concession gained in- that way 
may prove to be stronger and more securely fortified than a 
direct and absolute condition imposed by Congress. 

But these are all speculations. The actual and practical duty 
before us is to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The people 
of the North desire a complete restoration of the Union ; com- 
mercial, financial and manufacturing interests demand it ; our 
safety at home, our prestige abroad, demand it. The Demo- 
cratic party and the South, which are in fact identical, misrep- 
resent the actual condition of affairs when they declare that the 
Republicans are bent on keeping the Southern States out of 
the Union. We have given the best proof of our own sincerity, 
by already admitting one of them, and by laying down the 
moderate conditions upon Avhich we propose to admit them all. 
But I beg you, I beg the Republicans of Maine, who constitute 



70 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

the great majority of the enth-e people of our State, not to be 
driven into any surrender of the position which demands of the 
Southern States that they shall give us security for the future. 
Indemnity for the jjast we cannot exact from them : they cannot 
bring back the dead that sleep in honored graves, they cannot 
repay to us llie thousands of millions of money that have been 
sacrificed in the war to retain them in the Union. But in the 
name of the sacred dead, and as a securit\- for v/asted treasure, 
we ask that these States shall be so bound by obligations of 
duty and of honor, that they cannot again disturb the integrity 
of the Union, or again subject the loyal States to costly sacrifice 
of blood and to the destruction of the National resources. 

I am often asked, during my canvass of the District, what 
Congress will do if the Southern States refuse to accept this 
Fourteenth Amendment as a condition to their restoration to 
the Union. Of course, I am not in any sense empowered to 
answer that question : I can only give you my own opinion, and 
assure you of my own action. My judgment is that if the 
Southern States reject the Fourteenth Amendment and refuse 
to return to the Union subject to its conditions, they will be 
kept out until they accept what to them will be a still harsher 
condition, but what to our view in Maine would be the more 
just condition, — of accepting impartial manhood suffrage, with- 
out regard to creed, caste or color, as the basis of their re-admis- 
sion to representation in Congress. I know that the Southern 
States are stimulated by leading Northern Democrats and by all 
the force of President Johnson's Administration, to resist and 
reject the invitation contained in the submission of the Four- 
teenth Amendment. They believe that a revolution in public 
opinion can be effected against the Republicans, that the more 
prolonged the exclusion of the States the more radical the 
revolt will be against the power of Congress, and that if the 
Southern States will stand out solidlv against the Fourteentli 
Amendment they will soon be re-enforced by a sufficient number 
of Northern States to give them the control of Congress and 
the dictation of their own terms for re-entering the Union. 

You can judge as well as I, fellow-citizens, as to the probabil- 
ity of these calculations of our opponents l)eing fulfilled. But 
it is no time for us to tarry in speculation. Action, prompt and 



THE OBVIOUS DUTY OF MAINE. 71 

decisive, is the demaucl of the hour. We can do much to pre- 
vent their fulfihnent. We can influence the public opinion of 
Maine ; we can send a united Republican delegation to Con- 
gress ; we can give a large poj^ular majority to our gallant can- 
didate for Governor [General Chamberlain], who represents 
the aggregate Republican opinion of the State on all the issues 
involved. Let us not stop to think of what other States may- 
do, but let us employ the few remaining days of this canvass, 
not merely in defeating the Democratic party, — for that result 
is already assured, — but in defeating it by so large and so 
overwhelming a vote as will emphasize the opinion of Maine 
and thereby influence the judgment of other States. Let us in 
this way give warning to the Southern States that if they reject 
the conditions now offered them, they will not be tendered a 
second time in the same form, and each time they are rejected 
they will probably have an additional exaction placed upon 
them, — not from revenge upon the citizens of those States, but 
because of the reason for stringent exaction which their defiant 
rejection of fair terms and their truculent disposition would 
demand as essential to a safe system of Reconstruction. I think, 
in the present crisis, it might be well for the leaders of public 
opinion in the South to refresh their minds with the moral 
contained in the ancient fable of the Sibylline Books. 



POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



SHALL THE LATE REBELS WIELD THE ENTIRE 
CIVIL POWER OF THE SOUTH? 



[The Campaign of ISGO closed in November with the assured and general 
belief that the Southern States would not accept Reconstruction on the basis 
of the Fourteenth Amendment. Some of those States had already rejected it 
when Congress met in December. On that basis of fact Mr. Blaine delivered 
the following speech in the House on the 10th of December, 1866.] 

Mr. Chairman, — The popular elections of 18G6 have decided 
that the lately rebellious States shall not be re-admitted to the 
privilege of representation in Congress on any less stringent 
condition than the adoj)tion of the pending Constitutional 
Amendment. But those elections have not determined that the 
privilege of representation shall be given to those States as an 
immediate consequence of adopting the amendment. In that 
respect the decision of the loyal people has been rather negative 
than affirmative ; expressive of the least that would be accepted 
rather than indicative of the most that might be demanded. 
Had the Southern States, after the adjournment of Congress, 
accepted the amendment promptly and in good faith, as a defini- 
tive basis of adjustment, the loyal States would have indorsed 
it as such, and the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress 
would have been largely engaged in perfecting the details for 
the full and complete representation of all the States on the 
new basis of apportionment. 

Tlie Southern States, however^ have not accepted the amend- 
ment as a basis of adjustment, but have on the other hand 
vehemently opposed it ; every one of them that has thus far 
acted on the question, with the exception of Tennessee, having 
defiantly rejected it. This absolute and obdurate refusal on 
the part of those States to accept the amendment as the condi- 
tion of their regaining the privilege of representation, certainly 



RELATIVE STRENGTH OF SECTIONS. 73 

relieves Congress from whatever promise or obligation may- 
have been originally implied in regard to admitting them to 
representation upon their adopting the amendment — this 
promise, or implication, or whatever you choose to term it, 
being, by universal understanding, conditioned on the South- 
ern States accepting the amendment in good faith, as was signi- 
ficantly illustrated in the case of Tennessee. 

But even if the Constitutional Amendment should be definitely 
accepted, South as well as North, as the condition on which the 
rebel States are to regain the privilege of Congressional rep- 
resentation, the actual enjoyment of that privilege would of 
necessity be postponed until the terms of the amendment could 
be complied with, and that Avould involve a somewhat uncertain 
period of time. I take it for granted, as I did when I voted 
for the Constitutional Amendment, and as I presume every 
other gentleman on this floor did, that we are not to be guilty 
of the supreme folly of declaring that the basis of represen- 
tation is so unfair as to require correction by Constitutional 
Amendment, and then forthwith admit the Southern States to 
the House with their undue and inequitable share of represen- 
tatives. If the Southern States are to be deprived of their 
undue share of representatives, based on their non-voting pop- 
ulation, they should be deprived of them at once, and not be 
admitted, even temporarily, with the old apportionment, by 
which they would continue to exercise in the House of Repre- 
sentatives and in the Electoral Colleges the same weight of 
influence enjoyed by them before the rebellion. 

The population of the States recently slave-holding, was by 
the census of 1860 only 12,240,000, of whom 8,039,000 were 
whites and 4,201,000 negroes. The population of the free 
States by the same census was 19,201,546, of whom only 237,- 
000 were negroes. It would hardly be maintained by any one 
that the States lately slave-holding, taken as a whole, have done 
any thing more than hold good their population of 1860, while 
in the free States, despite the losses of the war, the ratio of 
increase has never been more rapid than since that year. It is 
speaking with moderation to say that the population of the free 
States is to-day 25,000,000. 

Supposing the Constitutional Amendment to be adopted. 



74 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

therefore, as the basis of re-admitting the Southern States to the 
privilege of representation, it would be a cruel mockery of the 
whole aim and intent of that amendment to usher those States 
upon this floor with the full number of representatives assigned 
them l)y the census of 18t)0, when three-fifths of their slaves 
and all their disfranchised free people of color were allowed 
them in fixing the basis of apportionment. Were they so ad- 
mitted to-day, the aggregate number of representatives from 
the late slave States would be eighty-five, and from the free 
States one hundred and fifty-six — making a House of two hun- 
dred and forty-one in all. And yet if those two hundred and 
forty-one members were divided between the free and slave 
States on the basis of the representative population as directed 
by the Constitutional Amendment, the slave States would have 
])ut fifty-eight members, while the free States would have one 
hundred and eighty-three. 

A corresponding change would be wrought in the Electoral 
Colleges. Were the Government to permit an election for 
President and Vice-President in 1868 on the basis assigned by 
the census of 1860, the late slave States would have 115 elec- 
toral votes, while the free States would have 198. But on the 
actual basis contemplated by the Constitutional Amendment 
the late slave States would have but 88, while the free States 
would have 225. On the old basis the free States would thus 
have a majority of 83, while on the basis of the Constitutional 
Amendment they would have a majority of 127 ; a net differ- 
ence of 44 electoral votes in favor of the free States. 

In view of these results, which are the plainest arithmetical 
deductions, it could not be expected that the free States, even 
if they were to adhere to the Constitutional Amendment as the 
ultimatum of adjustment, would consent to have the lately 
rebellious States admitted to representation here and to a par- 
ticipation in the Electoral Colleges until the relative and proper 
strength of the several States should be adjusted anew by a 
special census and by an apportionment made in pursuance 
thereof. It was in this belief and with these views that at the 
last session of Congress I framed a bill providing for a special 
enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States, which bill 
was on my motion referred to the Reconstruction Committee, 



THE REAL CONDITIONS OF RECONSTRUCTION. 75 

and has never been reported to the House by that Committee 
either favorably or adversely. 

What then shall be done ? The people, so far as I represent 
them, have plainly spoken in the late elections, and the inter- 
pretation of their voice is not difficult. They have pronounced 
with unmistakable emphasis in favor of the Constitutional 
Amendment with the superadded and indispensable prerequi- 
site of manhood suffrage. The Constitutional Amendment with 
its definition of American citizenship, with its guaranty of the 
national obligations, and with its prohibition of the assumption 
of the rebel debt, is an invaluable addition to our orofanic law. 
We cannot surrender its provisions, and the rebel States cannot 
by their utmost resistance defeat its ultimate adoption. It is 
too late to deny or even to argue the right or power of the 
Government to impose upon those States conditions precedent 
to their resumption of the privilege of representation. The 
President set the example by exacting three highly important 
concessions from those States as las basis of reconstruction. 
Congress followed by imposing four other conditions as iU basis 
of reconstruction. Now the people have spoken, demanding 
one additional condition as tlieir basis of reconstruction, and 
that condition is the absolute equality of American citizens in 
civil and political rights without regard to caste, color, or creed. 

The objection in the popular mind of the loyal States to the 
Constitutional Amendment as a basis of final adjustment, is not 
directed to what that amendment will effect, but to what it 
will not effect. Among the objects of prime importance which 
it will not effect is the absolute protection of the two classes 
in the South to whom the Government owes a special debt, — 
the loyal white men and the loyal black men. The amend- 
ment, if made the basis of final adjustment without further 
condition, leaves the rebel element of the South in possession 
of the local governments, free to persecute the Union men 
of all complexions in numberless ways, and to deprive them of 
all participation in civil affairs, provided they will submit to 
a curtailed representation in Congress as the penalty. The 
danger is that they would accept the infliction on themselves 
in order to secure the power of visiting the loyalists with a full 
measure of vengeance ; just as certain religious denominations in 



76 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

England, at various times under the reign of the Stuarts, favored 
measures of proscription which bore with some hardship on 
themselves, because they were enabled thereby to punish some 
rival and hated sectaries with positive severity and cruelty. 

Among the most solemn duties of a sovereign government is 
the protection of those citizens who, under great temptations 
and amid great perils, maintain their faith and their loyalty. 
The obligation of the Federal Government to protect the loy- 
alists of the South is supreme, and they must take all needful 
means to provide that protection. The most needful is the 
gift of free suffrage, and that must be guaranteed. There is 
no protection you can extend to a man so effective and con- 
clusive as the power to protect himself. And in assuring pro- 
tection to the loyal citizen you assure permanency to the 
Government. The bestowal of suffrage is therefore not merely 
the discharge of a personal obligation toward those who are 
enfranchised, but it is the most far-sighted provision against 
social disorder, the surest guaranty for peace, j)rosperity, and 
public justice. 



NATIONAL HONOR AND THE NATIONAL DEBT. 77 



NATIONAL HONOR IN THE PAYMENT OF 
THE NATIONAL DEBT. 



[Speech of Mr. Blaine in the House of Representatives Nov. 26, 1867, the 
House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union.] 

Mr. Chairman, — Within the past few months, some erro- 
neous and mischievous views have been put forward in regard 
to the nature of the public obligation imposed by the debt of 
the United States. Without stopping to notice the lesser lights 
of the new doctrine, and not caring to anal^^ze the various forms 
of repudiation suggested from irresponsible sources throughout 
the countr}^, I propose to review, as briefly as may be, the posi- 
tion contemporaneously assumed by two able and distinguished 
gentlemen — the one from the West, the other from the East — 
the one the late candidate of the Democratic party for the Vice- 
Presidency — [Mr. Pendleton of Ohio] — the other a prominent 
member of this House from one of the strongest Republican 
districts of the State of Massachusetts [General Butler]. 

The position of these gentlemen I understand to be simply 
this : that the p7'mcipal of the United States bonds, known as the 
five-twenties, may he fairly and legally paid in paper currency hy 
the Government after the expiration of five years from tlie date of 
issue. 

A brief review of the origin of the five-twenty bonds will 
demonstrate, I think, that this position is in contravention of 
the honor and good faith of the National Government ; that it 
is hostile to the spirit and the letter of the law ; that it con- 
temptuously ignores the common understanding between bor- 
rower and lender at the time the loan was negotiated ; and that 
finally, even if such mode of payment were honorable and 
practicable, it would prove disastrous to the financial interests 
of the Government and the general prosperity of the country. 



78 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

I crave the attention and the indulgence of the House while I 
recapitulate the essential facts in support of my assertion. 

The issue of the five-twenty bonds was originally authorized 
by the act of Feb. 25, 1862, which provided for the large amount 
of $500,000,000. It is this series which was successfully dis- 
posed of by Jay Cooke & Co. in 1863, and of which a great pro- 
portion was subsequently purchased by foreign capitalists. It 
will be borne in mind that up to that time in all the loan bills 
passed by Congress not one word had ever been said in reo-ard 
to coin payment either of bond or coupon ; and yet it will be 
equally borne in mind that coin payment, both of the principal 
and interest of the public debt, has been the invariable rule 
from the foundation of the Government. No instance to the 
contrary can be found in our history. In the pithy language of 
Nathaniel Macon, " our Government was a hard-money Govern- 
ment, founded by hard-money men, and its debts were hard- 
money debts." 

It will be still further borne in mind that when the bill 
authorizing the original issue of five-twenties was under dis- 
cussion in Congress no man of any party, either in the Senate 
or the House, ever intimated that those bonds were to be paid 
in any thing else than gold or silver. The issue of legal-tender 
notes of contemporaneous origin was regarded as a temporary 
expedient, forced upon us by the cruel necessities and demands 
of war, and it was universally conceded that the specie basis 
was to be resumed long before the bonds should mature for 
payment. And in order that the public creditor might have the 
amplest assurance of the payment of both principal and interest 
in coin it was specially enacted that all duties on imports should 
be paid in coin, and the amount thus raised was distinctly 
pledged, not only to the payment of the interest in coin, but to 
the formation of a sinking fund for the ultimate redemption of 
the principal in coin. This provision is so important that I 
quote it entire. After providing that the duties shall be paid 
in coin, the act devotes the amount so collected to the follow- 
ing specific purposes : — 

" First, To the payment iu coin of the interest on the bonds of the 
United States. 

" Second, To the purchase or payment of one per cent of the entire debt 



PAYMENT OF THE PUBLIC DEBT. 79 

of the United States, to be made within each fiscal year after the first day 
of July, 1862, which is to be set apart as a sinking-fund, and tlie interest of 
which shall be in like manner applied to the purchase or payment of the 
public debt, as the Secretary of the Treasury shall from time to time 
direct." 

Much carping aiid criticism have been expended on the second 
clause of tliis provision, mainly by those who seem desirous of 
wresting and distorthig its plain and obvious meaning. Brush- 
ing aside all fine-span construction and cunning fallacy, it is 
manifest that the sinking-fund herein authorized was primarily 
to be formed from coin, and that it w^as only to be invested 
and re-invested in securities whose interest was equally pledged 
in coin ; that this process was not to be confined to any specific 
number of years, but was limited only by the amount and the 
duration of the debt which was ultimately to be redeemed by 
the sinking-fund thus constituted. The sinking-fund was thus 
to receive an annual increment in coin amounthig to the one- 
hundredth part of the entire debt of the Government ; and this 
increment was to be invested only in securities which w^ould 
yield coin interest for the further increment of the fujid. It 
would be difficult to conceive how the language of an enact- 
ment could more distinctly recognize and provide for the ulti- 
mate coin payment of the entire bonded debt of the nation. 
Instead of the Government having the right at this late day 
to change its coin obligation into one of paper, it seems to me 
that the pubhc creditors could with far more consistency 
allege that the Government had not kept faith with them l)v 
failing to provide the sinking-fund which was guaranteed at 
the outset as one of the special securities of the loan. 

But the argument does not rest merely on the after-con- 
struction of a statute to prove tliat the principal of the five- 
twenties is payable in coin. The declarations in Congress 
when the measure was under consideration were numerous and 
specific. Indeed, no other possible mode of payment was even 
hinted at, and Mr. Stevens, then chairman of tlie Ways and 
Means, was emphatic and repeated in his assertions that the 
bonds were redeemable in coin. He stated this fact no less than 
three times in his speech of Feb. 6, 1862, giving it all the 
prominence and emphasis that iteration and reiteration could 
impart. He spoke of the ^* redemption in gold in twenty 



80 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

years " as one of the special inducements for capitalists to 
invest, and he gave, in every form of words, the sanction of 
his influential position and great name, to the maintenance 
of the coin standard in the payment of the bonds. 

It may astonish even the gentleman from Pennsylvania him- 
self to be reminded that within less than three years from the 
date of these declarations he asserted on this floor — referring 
to the five-twenty bonds — that " it is just as dear as any tlimg 
is clear that the interest is payable in gold, but the principal in 
laioful moneyy He made this startling statement in answer to 
a question addressed to him by my honorable friend frouT'Ohio 
[Mr. Spalding], and the gentleman from Massachusetts has 
quoted it in his argument on this question as though it had 
been made when the five-twenty bill was originally introduced, 
and was to be taken as the authorized opinion of the Ways and 
Means Committee at that time. I have already shown that 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania was a firm advocate of coin 
payment, and that a considerable period had elapsed before he 
experienced his marvelous change of opinion on this question. 
But it is due to the gentleman from Pennsylvania to say that, 
late as he was in this declaration, he was in advance of other 
gentlemen who have since figured prominently as advocates 
of the doctrine. Should this scheme of repudiation ever suc- 
ceed, it is but just to give the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
the honor of first proposing it. He announced it on this floor 
while yet the gentleman from Massachusetts was doing honor- 
able service on the tented field, and while Mr. Pendleton was 
still adhering to those hard-money theories of which he was a 
conspicuous defender during his service in this House. 

But I digress. I was stating that while the original five- 
twenty bill was pending the declaration that the bonds were 
redeemable in coin was constantly repeated. It was the ground 
assumed by every member of the Committee of Ways and 
Means, so far as the record shows, and it was likewise the 
ground taken by the Finance Committee of the Senate, Mr. 
Fessenden and other members being on record in many ways 
to that effect. While so many gentlemen in both branches of 
Congress were repeating that these bonds were redeemable in 
coin, it is a significant circumstance, as already intimated, that 



PAYMENT OF THE PUBLIC DEBT. 81 

no one ventured the opposite opinion. The universality of the 
understanding at that time is tliat which renders a different 
construction now so reprehensible. Mr. Pendleton was present 
in his seat during the whole discussion of the measure, and he 
was an active and frequent partici})ant therein. Then was his 
time to have enunciated liis scheme of greenback payment if he 
ever intended it in good faith. As a gentleman of candor, how- 
ever, I am sure he will confess that he never dreamed of such 
an idea till long after the bonds were purchased by the people, 
and possibly not until some prospect of party advantage lured 
him to the adoption of a theorv which is equally at war with 
the letter of the law and with sound principles of finance. 

After the bill became a laAv JNIr. Chase, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, proceeded to place the loan formally on the market, 
and following the uniform previous practice of the Government, 
and especially adopting the language used by Mr. Stevens, and 
other gentlemen in both branches of Congress, he officially pro- 
claimed through the loan agents of the Government that the 
five-twenty bonds were " a six per ceyit loan^ the interest and 
principal payable in coin.'" It was on this basis, with this 
understanding, with this public proclamation, that the people 
were asked to subscribe to the loan. They had the assurance 
of an unbroken practice on the part of the Government, ren- 
dered still more significant by the provision for a sinking-fund 
in coin; they had the general assurance of both branches of 
Congress, especially expressed through the appropriate channels 
of the chairman of Finance in the Senate and the chairman of 
Ways and Means in the House, and further and finally enforced 
by a distinct declaration to that effect by the public advertise- 
ment proposing the loan to the people, issued by the authority 
of the Secretary of the Treasury. If any thing could con- 
stitute an honorable contract between borrower and lender — 
between Government and people — then was it a contract that 
the five-twenty bonds should be redeemed in coin. 

I have been thus minute, and possibly tedious, in regard to 
the facts attending the issue of the first series of five-twenties 
because in effect that established the rule for all subsequent 
issues. The principle laid down so clearly in the proposal for 
the first loan was steadily adhered to afterward. It is quite 



82 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

true that the chairman of Ways and Means [Mr. Stevens], as 
I have already said, changed his ground on the question, but 
he failed to influence Congress, notwithstanding his parade of 
terrible figures showing the utter impossibility of ever paying 
coin interest, to say nothing of coin principal. The gentle- 
man can recall his statistics with amusement, if not with 
advantage, from that grave of unfulfilled prophecies to whicli 
he, in common with the rest of us, have sent many baseless 
predictions. 

The next loan bill passed by Congress was that of jNIarch 3, 
1863, authorizing the borrowing of $5900,000,000. This is com- 
monly known as the ten-forty act, and it contains the special 
provision that both principal and interest shall be payable 
in coin. But this provision was never inserted by way of 
discrimination against the five-twenties, implying that they 
were to be paid in paper currency. Its origin palpably dis- 
credits any such inference. It was moved as an amendment 
by Mr. Thomas of Massachusetts, and it was moved to meet 
and repel the first covert insinuation that any bond of the 
United States was redeemable in any thing else than coin. 
The chairman of Ways and Means, in apparent forgetfulness of 
his declaration the preceding year, had for the first time inti- 
mated that the principal of United States bonds was payable in 
paper money, and the amendment of Mr. Thomas, as the discus- 
sion reported in the Globe clearly discloses, was intended as a 
sharp protest against this heresy of the gentleman from Penn- 
sylvania, and as such it was adopted by the House by a majority 
so overwhelming that its opponents did not call for a division. 
During the discussion, Mr. Horton of Ohio, a distinguished 
member of the Ways and Means, and a gentleman of very high 
character in every respect, said : — 

" I wish to state here that the Committee of Ways and Means, in framing 
this bill, never dreamed that these twenty-year bonds were to be payable in 
any thing other than coin until the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Stevens] told it j^esterday upon the floor of the House." 

In this connection I desire the special attention of the House 
to one fact of conclusive import, and it is this: at the time this 
ten-forty loan bill was passed, March 3, 1863, only $25,000,000 
of the five-twenty loan, authorized the year before, had been 



PAYMENT OF THE PUBLIC DEBT. 83 

disposed of. It was in the succeeding summer and autumn of 
1863, especially after the triumph of the Union arms at Vicks- 
burg and Gettysburg, that those marvellous sales of $500,000,000 
were effected through the Government agency of Jay Cooke & 
Co. And yet the gentleman from Massachusetts would have 
us believe that the people subscribed for a loan of 1500,000,000 
that was payable in five years in paper currency, when another 
loan, for a larger amount, to run forty years, expressly payable in 
coin, was already authorized and about to be put on the market. 
Such a conclusion cannot be reconciled even with the common 
sanity, to say nothing of the proverbial shrewdness, of those 
who invested their money in the five-twenty loan. Every one 
can see, sir, that not one doHar of the five-twenty loan could 
have been disposed of on the understanding that the bonds were 
redeemable in currency, while another loan for a longer period, 
possibly at the same rate of interest, for the bill so allowed, and 
absolutely redeemable in coin, was already authorized, and imme- 
diately to be offered to the public. 

The next loan bill in the order of time was the act of March 
3, 1864, which was merely supplementary to the ten-forty bill, 
whose histbry I have just reviewed. It covered the amount of 
f 200,000,000, and, like the bill to 'which it formed a supple- 
ment, it provided for both interest and i^rincipal to be paid in 
coin. Under this bill more than one hundred and seventy-five 
million dollars were negotiated, partly in ten-forties, and partly 
in five-twenties ; by far the greater part in the former. But as 
some five-twenties were negotiated under it, the gentleman from 
Massachusetts, even oa the line of logic which he has sought to 
travel, will be compelled to acknowledge tliat they were pay- 
able in coin, and hence, according to his theory, some of the 
five-twenties are redeemable in coin and some in paper — a dis- 
tinction which has never yet been pvoclaimed, and the equity 
of which would hardly be apparent to the liolders of the same 
description of bonds — identical in phrase, and differing only 
in the subordinate and immaterial circumstance of date. 

The last loan bill to which I need specially refer is that of 
June 30, 1864, under the provisions of which the five-twenties 
bearing that date were issued. The seven-tliirties, authorized 
by the same act, as well as by the subsequent acts of Jan. 28 



84 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

and March 3, 1865, were convertible into five-twenties of the 
same tenor and description with those whose issue was directly 
authorized ; so that in reviewing the history of the loan bill 
of June 30, 1864, I shall, in effect, close the narrative of Con- 
gressional proceedings in regard to five-twenty bonds. The 
history of that bill shall be brief. It was discussed in its vari- 
ous provisions very elaborately in both branches of Congress. 
As re])orted from the Ways and jMeans Committee it was 
worded like all previous bonds, promising to pay so many 
dollars to the holder, without specifying that they were to be 
any thing else than coin dollars, in which United States bonds 
had always been paid. Toward the close of the discussion Mr. 
Brooks of New York, then, as now, a member of this House, 
moved to insert an amendment j^roviding especially that the 
bonds should be '•'"payable in coinr Mr. Brooks was answered 
by Mr. Hooper of Massachusetts, on behalf of the Ways and 
Means Committee, as follows : — 

" The bill of last year, the 1900,000,000 bill, contained these words, but 
it was not deemed necessary or considered expedient to insert them in this 
bill. I will send to the desk and ask to have read, as a part of my reply to 
the gentleman from New York, a letter from the Secretary of the Ti'easury 
givinii' his views npon this point/' 

The Clerk read as follows from Secretary Chase's letter dated May 18, 
1SG4: — 

" It has been the constant usage of the Department to redeem all coupon 
and registered bonds, forming part of the funded or permanent debt of the 
United States, in coin, and this usage has not been deviated from during 
my administration of its affairs. 

" The five-twenty sixes, payable twenty years from date, though redeem- 
able after five years, are considered as belonging to the funded or jaermanent 
debt, and so also are the twenty years sixes, into which the three years 
seven-thirty notes are convertible. These bonds,*therefore, according to the 
usage of the (iovernment, are payable in coin." 

Apparently satisfied with this statement, Mr. Brooks with- 
drew his amendment, regarding the point as conclusively settled 
I suppose, not only b}^ the uniform practice of the Government, 
but by the special declaration of the Secretary of the Treasury, 
who immediately afterward proceeded on the basis of that letter 
to put the bonds on the market. Mr. Hooper stated the case 
well when he said it was " not deemed necessary or considered 
expedient " to insert coin payment in this bill ; " not necessary," 
for the practice of the Government, and the assurances of the 



PAYMENT OF THE PUBLIC DEBT. 85 

Treasury Department in its advertisements in proposing for 
loans, conclusively settled the point ; and not " considered expe- 
dient," because to specially insert coin payment in all the loan 
bills except that of Feb. 25, 1862, 'under which $500,000,000 
of five-twenties had been sold, might, in the end, by the exclusio 
unius, give some shadow of ground for the mischievous and 
groundless inference which is now sought to be drawn. 

We thus find that the voice of Congress has been uniform 
and consistent in support of the principle of paying the bonded 
debt in coin. No vote in Congress, even implying the opposite 
theory, has ever been given ; even the weiglity inlluence and 
conceded ability of the distinguished gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania failing to carry with him any support whatever when he 
made his surprising and unprecedented change on this question. 
But the public creditors did not rely solely on the declarations 
of leading men in Congress in regard to coin payment, nor did 
they rest wholly on the past practice and the good faith of the 
Government. They had, in addition to both these strong 
grounds of confidence and assurance, the more direct and ex- 
plicit guaranty of the Treasury Department, the authorized 
agent of the Government, speaking ex cathedra, with the knowl- 
edge and assent of Congress. 

I have already quoted Secretary Chase's significant declara- 
tions in his letters and his public proposals for loans, and I have 
now to quote one of his equally significant acts. At the close 
of 1862 the twenty year loan of 1842, amounting to nearly three 
million dollars, fell due. Nothing was said in that loan about 
coin payment, and thus a grand opportunity was afforded to 
test the theory of paper payment. Circumstances all conspired 
to favor such a policy if it could be honorably adopted. Gold 
was at a high premium, and the Government was passing 
through the darkest and most doubtful hours of the whole 
struggle. Could there have been even a decent pretext to pay 
the debt in paper currency the temptation was surely great 
enough to resort to it, if not fully to justify it. But in the face 
of all the adverse circumstances ; with gold very high and daily 
rising; with expenses enormous and daily increasing; with 
resources already embarrassed and daily growing more so, and 
with a military situation rendered well-nigh desperate by 



86 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

months of almost unbroken disaster, Secretary Chase decided 
that the faith of the Government demanded that its funded 
debt, fallini^ due no matter when and owned by no matter 
whom, must be paid in coin. And it ivas paid in coin; and no 
voice but the voice of approval was raised in either branch of 
Congress. The course of Secretary Chase was not only honor- 
able to himself and the country, but it was in the highest de- 
gree wise merely from the stand-point of worldly Avisdom ; for 
it created so profound a confidence in the good faith of oui- 
Government that it aided us incalculably in the negotiation of 
all our great loans for the war. When the Government paid 
its debt to the uttermost farthing at such a time capitalists at 
once argued that there never could come a crisis when any 
evasion of public obligation would be resorted to. It has 
been reserved for the gentleman from Massachusetts, and the 
gentleman from Ohio, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 
to propose that our Government should adopt a policy in the 
sunshine and prosperity of peace which it scorned to resort 
to in the storms and adversities of war. 

The course of Secretary Chase in guarantying coin payment 
on all bonds of the United States was followed by his success- 
ors. Secretary Fessenden and Secretar}^ McCulloch. The words 
of Mr. Fessenden are entitled to great weight in the premises, 
for he had been chairman of Finance in the Senate during the 
passage of all the loan bills, had elaborately discussed them in 
turn, and had as largely as any single member in either branch 
of Congress, shaped their provisions. His views on the ques- 
tion at issue may be briefly presented by the following extract 
from his official report made to Congress in December, 1864: — 

*' Though forced to resort to the issue of paper for the time, the idea of 
a specie basis was not lost sight of, as the payment of interest on long loans 
in coin was amply secured. And though in several of the acts authorizing 
the issue of bonds at long periods payment of the principal at maturity in 
coin is not specifically provided, the omission, it is believed, was accidental, 
as there could have been no intention to make a distinction between the different 
classes of securities in this regard." 

It will be noted that this declaration of Mr. Fessenden, made 
in his official report, was at the very time of the negotiation of 
the five-twenties of 1864, and preceded the large sale of seven- 
thirties which were convertible into five-twenties. So that in 



PAYMENT OF THE PUBLIC DEBT. ' 87 

eifect it was an additional guaranty of coin payment on the 
part of the Government, oj)erating at once as the condition and 
the inducement of the loan. 

It is well known that Secretary McCulloch entertains pre- 
cisely the same opinions that were so freely expressed by 
Messrs. Chase and Fessenden, and he placed himself on record 
on the question by his letter to L. P. Morton & Co. of New 
York, wlierein he says, under date of Nov. 15, 1866 : — 

" I regard, as did also my predecessors, all bonds of the United States as 
Ijayable in coin. The bonds which have matured since the suspension of 
specie payments have been so paid, and I have no doubt that the same will 
be true with all others. This being, as I understand it to be, the established 
policy of the Government, the five-twenty bonds of 1S62 will either be 
called in at the expiration of five years from their date and paid in coin, 
or be permitted to run until the Government is prepared to pay them in 
coin." 

In view of the uniform declarations of the Treasury Depart- 
ment, made through official reports, through public proposals 
for loans, and through personal letters of assurance, all guaran- 
tying coin payment of the five-twenty bonds, I submit that the 
Government is bound thereto even if there were no other obli- 
gation expressed or implied. These official and unofficial pro- 
mulgations from the Treasury Department were made with the 
full knowledge of Congress, and without the slightest expression 
of dissent on the part of that body. Had Congress not be- 
lieved or intended that the five-twenty bonds were to be paid 
in coin the Secretary should not have been allowed with its 
evident assent so to advertise ; and for Congress, after this 
significant permission and warrant to step forward at this late 
day and declare itself not bound by the conditions published 
by the Secretary is simply to place the United States Govern- 
ment in the position of a man playing a " confidence game " 
in which the Treasury Department and Congress are the con- 
federate knaves, and the whole mass of bondholders the unfor- 
tunate victims. 

But now, Mr. Chairman, suppose, for the sake of argument, 
we admit that the Government may fairly and legally pay the 
five-twenty bonds in paper currency, what then? I ask the 
gentleman from Massachusetts to tell us, what then ? It is 
easy, I know, to issue as many greenbacks as will pay the 



88 rOLlTICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

maturing bonds, regardless of the effect upon the inflation of 
prices and the general derangement of business. Five hundred 
millions of the five-twenties are now payable, and according to 
the mode suggested all we have to do is to set the printmg- 
presses in motion, and "so long as rags and lampblack hold 
out " we need have no embarrassment about paying our national 
debt. But the ugly question recurs, What are you going to do 
with the greenbacks thus put afloat? Five hundred millions 
this year, and eleven hundred millions more on this theory of 
pajanent by the year 1872, so that within the period of four or 
five years we would have added to our paper money the trifling- 
inflation of $1,600,000,000. 

Payment of the five-twenty bonds in paper currency involves, 
therefore, a limitless issue of greenbacks, Avith attendant evils of 
great magnitude. The worst evil of the whole is the delusion 
which calls this a payment at all. It is no payment in any 
proper sense, for it neither gives the creditor what he is entitled 
to, nor does it release the debtor from subsequent responsibility. 
You may get rid of the five-twenty by issuing the greenback, 
but how will you get rid of the greenback except by paying- 
coin ? The only escape from ultimate payment of coin is to de- 
clare that as a nation we permanently and finally renounce all 
idea of ever attaining a specie standard ; that we launch our- 
selves upon an ocean of paper money, without shore or sound- 
ing, with no rudder to guide us and no compass to steer by. 
This is precisely what is involved if we adopt this mischiev- 
vous suggestion of "a new way to pay old debts." Our fate in 
attempting such a course may be easily read in the history of 
similar follies both in Europe and in our own country. Pros- 
tration of credit, financial disaster, wide-spread distress among 
all classes of the community, would form the closing scenes in 
our career of gratuitous folly and national dishonor. From 
such an abyss of sorrow and humiliation it would be a painful 
and toilsome effort to regain as sound a position in our finances 
as we are asked voluntarily to abandon to-da3^ 



NOT A PROPER SOURCE OF REVENUE. 89 



TAXATION OF UNITED STATES BONDS. 



[Speech of Mr. Blaine in the House of Representatives, June 23, 18GS, tlie 
House being in Committee of the Wliole, 3Ir. Cullom of Ilhuois in tlie Cliair. ] 

Mr. Chaie:man, — The fact that the bonds of the United 
States are exempt from State and miinici[)al taxation has cre- 
ated discontent among the people, — the belief prevailing quite 
generally that if this exemption could be removed the local 
burdens of the tax-payer would be immediately and essentially 
lightened. Many persons assert this belief from a spirit of 
mischievous demagogism, and many do so from sincere con- 
viction. To the latter class I beg to submit some facts and 
suggestio-ns which may modify if not entirely change their 
conclusions. 

The total coin-bearing debt of the United States, the conver- 
sion of seven-thirties being now practically completed, amounts 
to a little more than twenty-one hundred million dollars ; of 
this large amount, some two hundred millions draw but five per 
cent interest, a rate not sufficiently high in the present condi- 
tion of the money market to j)rovoke liostility or suggest the 
especial necessity of taxation. Indeed it may be safely said 
that there never has been any popular dissatisfaction with re- 
gard to the non-taxation of the five per cents, it being agreed 
by common consent that such a rate of interest was not 
unreasonable on a loan negotiated at such a time. 

The agitation may, therefore, be regarded as substantially 
confined to the six per cent coin-bearing bonds, which amount 
to nineteen hundred millions of dollars. Many people honestly 
but thoughtlessly believe that if this class of bonds could be 
taxed by local authority the whole volume rej)resented by them 
would at once be added to the lists of the assessor. It is my 
purpose to show that this conclusion is totally unfounded, and 



90 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

that if the riglit of local taxation existed in its amplest extent, 
but a minor fraction of the bonds could by any possibility be 
subjected to larger local tax than they already pay. 

The entire amount of these bonds, as I have stated, is nine- 
teen liuiidred million dollars ; and of this total, by the best and 
most careful estimates attainable, at least six hundred and fifty 
millions are now held in Europe. This amount could not, 
therefore, be reached l)y any system of local taxation, however 
searching. Deducting the amount thus held abroad, we find 
the amount held at home is reduced to twelve hundred and 
fifty million dollars. 

But of this twelve hundred and fifty millions more than one- 
third, or to sjieak with accuracy, about four hundred and 
twenty-five millions, are held by the national banks, and no 
form of property in the United States pays so large a tax, both 
local and general, as these banks. The stock, the depositories, 
and the dej^osits which these four hundred and twenty-five 
millions of bonds represent pay full local tax at the highest rate, 
besides a national tax averaging about two and a half per cent. 
Were the power of local taxation made specific on the bonds 
held by the national banks, they could not yield a dollar more 
than is now realized. It thus follows that the twelve hundred 
and fifty millions of bonds in this country, presumptively escap- 
ing local taxation, must be reduced by the amount represented 
by the banks, and hence we find the aggregate falls to eight 
hundred and twenty-five millions. 

The reduction, however, goes still farther, for it must be 
remembered that the savings banks have invested their deposits 
in these bonds to the amount of one hundred and seventy-five 
millions. In some States by local law the deposits of savings 
banks are exempt from taxation, as an incentive to thrift and 
economy. In other States, where these deposits are taxed, as 
in Connecticut, it has been held by judicial decision that the 
fact of their investment in United States bonds does not exempt 
them from taxation. Hence these one hundred and seventy- 
five millions, thus invested in savings-bank deposits, are either 
locally taxable, or, if exempt, it is by State law and not by 
virtue of the general exemption of the bonds. It thus follows 
that the eight hundred and twenty-five millions must be further 



TAXATION OF UNITED STATES BONDS. 91 

reduced by this sum of one hundred and seventy-five millions, 
leaving but six hundred and fifty millions not already included 
within the scope of local taxation. 

But there is a still further reduction of thirty millions of 
bonds held by the life insurance companies on precisely the same 
terms as the deposits of savings banks — that is, either taxed 
locally, or, if exempt, deriving the exemption from the local 
law. The surplus earnings and reserves of these life insurance 
companies invested to the extent of thirty millions in United 
States bonds are as open to taxation when invested in that 
form as though they were held in State or railroad securities. 
Deducting these thirty millions we find the untaxed bonds 
reduced to six hundred and twenty millions. 

There is still another large reduction ; for the fire and marine 
insurance companies, the annuity and trust companies and 
other corporations which cannot readily be classed, hold in 
the aggregate over one hundred and twenty-five millions of 
bonds ; and these are held on precisely the same basis as those 
held by the savings bank and the life insurance companies. 
These numerous corporations have their capital stock, their re- 
serves and their surplus earnings invested in Government bonds 
to the extent named, and they are in this form as open to taxa- 
tion and are actually taxed as much as though they were in- 
vested in any other form of security. Making the deduction of 
this one hundred and twenty-five millions we find remaining 
but four hundred and ninety-five millions of the six per cent 
gold-bearing bonds that are not already practically subjected to 
local taxation. Allowing for the possibility that one hundred 
millions of the five per cents are held instead of six per cents 
in all the channels of investment I have named, and it follows 
that at the outside figure there are to-day in the whole country 
less than six hundred millions of Government sixes, not fully 
subjected to the power of local taxation. And these six hun- 
dred millions are rapidly growing less as the various corporate 
institutions I have named continue to invest their funds in the 
bonds. These institutions desire a security that is of steady 
value, not liable to fluctuation, and at all times convertible into 
money ; and hence they seek Government bonds in preference 
to any other form of investment. The high premium on the 



92 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

bonds induces individuals to part with them, and hence they 
are readily transferred to corporate ownership, \\here they 
become in effect at once subject to local taxation and are no 
longer obnoxious to the charge of evading or escaping their 
just share of municipal burden. In the hands c^f individuals 
the bonds may be concealed, but in the possession of corpora- 
tions concealment is necessarily impossible. 

If these statistical statements needed any verification it Avould 
be supplied by an examination of the income returns recently 
made under oath and published in all the large cities of the 
country, disclosing the fact that the amount of bonds held by 
the wealthy men of the country has been continually growing 
less, just as they have been absorbed by foreign purchase and 
by corporate investment. The correctness of these income 
returns in reference to the investment in bonds will be accepted 
even by the incredulous and the uncharitable, when it is re- 
membered that the interest of those making them was to exag- 
gerate rather than depreciate the respective amounts of bonds 
held by them. Instead, then, of nineteen hundred millions of 
these bonds runnhig free of taxation, it is clear that less than 
six hundred millions are open to that charge — less than one- 
third of the whole amount. The remainder, largely more than 
two-thirds of the whole, are either held abroad, where no local 
taxation can reach them, or tliey are held at home in such form 
as subjects them to local taxation. 

Let us suppose that we were now in possession of the full 
power to tax by local authority these six hundred millions 
of bonds presumptively owned by individuals I Would we 
realize anything from it? On its face the prospect might be 
fair and inviting, but in practice it would assuredly prove de- 
lusive and deceptive. The trouble would be that the holders 
of the bonds could not be found. No form of property is so 
easily concealed, none so readily transferred back and forth, 
none so difficult to trace to actual ownership. We have hun- 
dreds of millions of State bonds, city bonds, and railroad securi- 
ties in this country, and yet every one knows that it is only 
an infinitesimal proportion of this vast investment that is ever 
represented on the books of assessors and tax-collectors. As a 
pertinent illustration, I might cite the case of the bonds of my 



TAXATION OF UNITED STATES BONDS. 93 

own State, of which there are over five millions in existence 
to-day, largely held as a favorite investment by the citizens of 
Maine. Of this whole sum I am safe in saying that scarcely a 
dollar is found on the lists of any assessor in the State. 

The facility for concealing ownership in national bonds is 
far greater than in any other form of security, and the propor- 
tion in the hands of individuals that would escape the assess- 
ment of local taxes may be inferred with reasonable certainty 
from the analogies I have suggested, which are familiar to 
all who have given the least attention to the subject. Indeed, 
I venture to assert with confidence that if the power of local 
taxation of these bonds were fully accorded to-day, the tax- 
lists of our cities and towns would not be increased on an aver- 
age one per cent. Many of those who to-day may be ambitious 
to parade their bonds when protected by what is deemed an 
offensive exemption, would suddenly have no bonds when the 
power of taxation applied to them. Indeed, the utter failure to 
realize any thing from this source, if the power to test it were 
granted, would in the end create more dissatisfaction than that 
exemption, which, in theory, is offensive, but in practice is 
absolutely of no consequence whatever. 

But it may be asked, " Why are not the bonds taxed by 
national authority?" Granted, it will be urged, that the power 
of local taxation would be nugatory and valueless, " that affords 
all the stronger reason for taxing the bonds by direct Congres- 
sional enactment." In answer to this I have only to say that 
a tax levied directly upon the coupon is simply an abatement 
of interest, and that result can be reached in a better and more 
satisfactory and more honorable way. The determination mani- 
fested by this Congress and by the great Republican convention 
at Chicago to maintain the national faith, has already worked a 
large appreciation in the value of the bonds, and with the 
strengthening of our credit, which results from an honest policy, 
we shall speedily be able to fund our debt on a lower scale of 
interest, running down to five, four and a half, and ultimately 
to four per cent per annum. Should we proceed, however, in 
violation of good faith and of the uniform practice of civilized 
nations, to hold back part of the stipulated interest instead of 
effectinsf an honorable exchange of bonds to the mutual advan- 



94 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

tage of the Government and the public creditor, we should 
only punish ourselves, produce calamitous results in the busi- 
ness world, and permanently injure our national fame. 

To withhold one per cent of the interest under the plea of a 
national tax this year might be followed by withholding two per 
cent next year and three per cent the year ensuing. To enter 
upon such a policy would produce alarm at home and distrust 
abroad, for every man holding a bond would be forced to count 
his rate of interest not on what was stipulated in the contract, 
but on what might be the will and caprice of Congress in its 
annual withholding of a portion of the interest under the pre- 
tense of a tax. Under such a policy our bonds would be re- 
turned upon us from Europe with panic-like rapidity, and the 
drain upon our specie resources would produce an immediate 
and disastrous crisis in monetary circles. If even one-half of our 
bonds held in Europe were suddenly sent home it would drain 
us of two hundred and fifty millions of specie, and the financial 
distress throughout the land would be beyond the power of 
calculation or imagination. And yet that is the precise result 
involved if we should follow the policy advocated by those who 
urge us to tax the coupon and withhold one or two per cent of 
the interest. Let us reject such counsels, and adhere to the 
steady, straightforward course dictated alike by good policy 
and good faith. Let us never forget that in the language of 
the Chicago platform, " the best policy to diminish our burden 
of debt is to so improve our credit that capitalists will seek 
to loan us money at lower rates of interest than we now pay, 
and must continue to pay so long as repudiation, either partial 
or total, open or covert, is threatened or suspected." 



POLITICAL CAMPAIGN OF 1868. 95 



GRANT AND SEYMOUR COMPARED. 



[A speech delivered by Mr. Blaine at a Republican meeting in Augusta, 
Maine, July 11, 18(38.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — If now, at the beginning of the National 
campaign, leaving out of sight for the moment all the politi- 
cal issues between the two parties, you were simply called 
upon to select an officer to execute the laws of the United 
States, and were, moreover, compelled to make your selection 
between the two men now most prominently before the public, 
which would you take, — General Grant, or Governor Sey- 
mour ? I have put in the form of an hypothesis that which is 
indeed the actual condition of the case ; because every citizen 
of the United States, whatever considerations may govern his 
vote, will really be compelled to choose between the two men I 
have named. 

If I were empowered to answer for you, I should say that a 
man more highly gifted with the executive talent than Ulysses 
S. Grant could not be found within the limits of the United 
States. He is silent, prompt, punctual and decisive, with clear 
and quick judgment, without irritability of temper, with won- 
derful self-command. He is not under the sway of imagina- 
tion, is not influenced by sentiment, sees things as a realist, 
precisely as they are. He is not moved by any considera- 
tion outside of the line of plain matter of duty. He has no 
partisan prejudices, has grown up witliout party attachment, 
and would administer the Government without the slightest 
danger of undue influence from party consideration. If to be a 
politician is, as many persons think, a disability for a President, 
you can certainly feel assured that General Grant has no touch 
or taint of that kind. 

On the other hand, I should say of Horatio Seymour, that. 



96 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

while an accomplished politician, he is markedly deficient in 
the executive talent. He is an irresolute, if not timid, man, 
who is disposed to balance public and partisan considerations 
so nicely that he rarely reaches an absolute conclusion, and 
certainly never reaches one in time for prompt action. In the 
struggle between the temptations of party obligation and of con- 
science, he is always in doubt, too often in danger. He is, at 
the same time, a man of unquestioned ability, apparently frank, 
and perhaps meaning to be so even when he fails in the mo- 
ment of trial to maintain and exhibit that manly quality. He 
is personally a most amiable and agreeable gentleman ; and his 
strong hold upon the Democratic party of New York, and 
thence upon the Democratic party of the Nation, is due to the 
charm of his manners as much as to his ability, which friend 
and foe acknowledge to be of a high order. 

From these brief outlines and characteristics, if I have stated 
them correctly, it will be seen that in respect to executive abil- 
ity there is no ground for comparison, but only for contrast, 
between the two men. The one is gifted in the highest degree 
with the quality we are discussing: the other is so deficient 
that- we cannot in fairness speak of his possessing it at all. 
The one has shown his great powers of command in the most 
critical exigencies in which a man can be placed: the other 
was tried only once by a condition of affairs which demanded 
instant decision and promptness of action, and he failed. How 
long, if I may interpolate the question, do you suppose a 
blind, ignorant, unled mob could have held control of the 
American metropolis, if General Grant had been Governor of 
New York ? 

The contrast between General Grant and Governor Seymour 
grows more marked the longer we look at the record of each. 
In fact, it is a striking illustration of the good temper and good 
discipline of our people, and of the mutual respect of political 
parties, that we are so enlisted in the Presidential contest as 
to treat each candidate with the same courtesy in the arena 
of public discussion. Indeed, we seem to be in danger of 
forgetting that the Republican candidate is none other than the 
great commander of the Union armies which subdued the re- 
bellion, and thereby restored the Union ; and we seem equally 



GRANT AND SEYMOUR COMPARED. 97 

in danger of not remembering that the Democratic candidate is 
none other than that Governor of New York who was a stum- 
bling-block to President Lincoln at the very crisis of the civil 
struggle, and who, when the rebels were pushed to the last 
point of resistance, joined in a National Convention of the 
Democratic party, and demanded that the war should cease 
and that the rebels should be invited to a conference, while 
their armies lay waiting the result. It certainly should stir 
the blood of men who were heartily loyal to the Government 
through the civil war, who rejoiced at every Union victory, and 
were cast down by every rebel success, to see the candidacy of 
General Grant opposed by the candidacy of Horatio Seymour, 
who, if not himself disloyal to the Government, excited disloy- 
alty in others, and whose whole course, during the four years 
of strife, increased the burden placed upon the National Gov- 
ernment, and inspired the Confederacy to greater vigor by 
the dissatisfaction with the war which his leadership created 
throughout the North. 

To go a little farther into an analysis of the respective char- 
acters of these two men, let me say that Governor Seymour 
possesses a talent for political misrepresentation beyond that, 
I think, of any other public man in the United States. I do 
not mean misrepresentation of a broad and vulgar type, under- 
laid and overlaid with falsehood, but misrepresentation by in- 
ference, or by the suggestion of a fact which, while a fact, 
leaves an utterly misleading impression upon the mind of the 
hearer. I can, perhaps, .better illustrate this habit of Governor 
Seymour's mind by an incident, than by merely abstract ref- 
erence to it. On the 25th of June, a week or more preceding 
the late Democratic National Convention, Governor Seymour 
made a somewhat notable speech at a meeting of his partisans in 
Cooper Institute. In assailing the administration of the Gov- 
ernment by Republicans, he made this statement — and I give 
it in his exact language, in order that I may not, myself, be in 
any degree subject to the same charge which I have brought 
against Mr. Seymour : — 

" Since the war closed, in 1865, the Government has spent, in addition to 
its payments on the principal or interest of the public debt, more than one 
thousand millions of dollars. Of this sum there has been nearly eight hun- 



98 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

dred millions spent on the army and the navy, and for military purposes. 
This is nearly one-third oi the National debt. This was spent in time of 
peace." 

The fact which Governor Sej'iiiuur in this statement evidently- 
sought to impress upon his hearers was, that in a time of pro- 
found peace the military and naval expenses of the Government, 
under Republican rule, were at the rate of some two hundred 
and seventy millions per annum. He did not in explicit terms 
say two hundred and seventy millions a year, but he said eight 
hundred millions for three years, as though the expenditure 
was spread over the whole period. 

What now are the facts of the case ? When the war closed 
in April, 1865, — and I stated these facts in the House of 
Representatives, only two days after Governor Seymour's 
speech, — the armies of the Union bore on their rolls the names 
of nearly a million of men, and our navy, in its widely extended 
duty of blockading three thousand miles of coast, had nearly 
five hundred vessels in service, with, of course, a great many 
thousand sailors on board. The immediate result of National 
victory on land and sea was the mustering out of these count- 
less hosts of men. Many months of pay were due to more than 
half the army ; the bounty, to which those who served during 
the war were entitled, was due to all, and must now be paid. 
The pay of the sailors was as much in arrears as the pay of the 
soldiers, and, besides, in settling, they were entitled to receive 
millions of prize money which they had honestly earned. The 
enormous amount required for these closing settlements was 
readily provided, because the Government had unlimited credit 
in its hour of victory. I visited the Treasury Department, 
in order to get the material to answer Governor Seymour, 
and I received an official statement showing that the disburse- 
ments on account of the army and navy for the one hundred 
and seventy-four days following General Grant's closing victory 
over Lee, amounted to six hundred and twenty-five millions of 
dollars. Thus it will be seen that more than three-fourths 
of the eight hundred millions of dollars of war and navy ex- 
penses, which Governor Seymour says have been paid by the 
Government within the last three years, were really disbursed 
in Avhat might be called a lump sum at the close of hostilities, 



GRANT AND SEYMOUR COMPARED. 99 

when we settled with the soldiers and sailors, and paid them in 
ready cash for the service in which they had so honorably and 
so faithfully acquitted themselves. 

Of this great sum of six hundred and twenty-five millions of 
dollars, ninety-five millions were paid from the current revenues 
of the Government, and the loyal people advanced five hundred 
and thirty millions by subscribing that amount to the seven- 
thirty loan ; and yet this transaction is deliberately misrepre- 
sented by Governor Seymour, in making it appear that the 
entire outlay was the ordinary disbursement for War and Navy 
in a time of peace. With the six hundred and twenty-five 
millions deducted, it will be seen that the expenses of War and 
of Navy, for these last three years, have been but one hundred 
and seventy-five millions, or a little more than fifty-eight mil- 
lions per annum, for both branches of the National defense. 

Thus reduced, Governor Seymour's figures approximate the 
truth, and they exhibit a careful economy on the part of the 
Government. Go back ten years, to Mr. Buchanan's Admin- 
istration, and with an army far less than has been maintained 
for safety since the close of the war, with a navy not nearly so 
large as that now in commission, the two branches of the service 
cost forty millions of dollars. Taking the difference in the 
amount of force, and the fact that the expenditures of 1858 
were in coin, while those of the present time are in paper, 
considerably depreciated, every candid man will see that the 
Government outlays for the past three years have been on 
a more economic scale than were maintained during the last 
Democratic Administration that was in power. 

I have gone into this detail for the purpose, not merely of 
stopping an injurious mis-statement as to Government expendi- 
ture, but especially to illustrate the skillful way in which 
Governor Seymour conveys a charge that is inherently and 
intrinsically untrue. It was Prince Talleyrand, I think, who, 
in speaking of two distinguished European diplomatists, said 
that " the one lies, but never deceives ; while the other deceives, 
but never lies." I think that if Governor Seymour should 
cliange his public relations from an accomplished politician to 
become, as I have no doubt he would, a most skillful diploma- 
tist, he would be cousin-german to the second type referred to 



100 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

by Talleyrand. I would match him against the whole school of 
diplomacy in Europe, for deceiving without actually stating 
a falsehood, — compounding with his conscience by accuracy of 
verbal statement, and charging whatever erroneous impression' 
was created, not to his own lack of candor, but to the dullness 
and lack of information on the part of those who could so 
easily be made the victims of a polite misunderstanding. 

Let me ask now, fellow-citizens, if it would not read very 
strangely in history, should this patriotic American people, on 
the occasion of the first Presidential election after they had 
escaped the danger of war and restored the integrity and 
strength of the Government, deny the highest honor of the 
Republic to the chief military leader who conquered the rebel- 
lion, and bestow it upon the man the aggregate of whose efforts 
and influence was steadily and heavily against the Administra- 
tion charged with the maintenance of the Union ? I think no 
one will deny, when the time comes that we may coolly look 
back upon the conduct of Governor Seymour while he was in 
the executive chair of New York, or upon his course as a 
leader of the Democratic party, taking active part in the 
National Convention of 1864, that his influence was hurtful to 
the Union cause. Mr. Lincoln thought so, and Mr. Stanton 
thought so, and all the leading generals in the field thought 
so. As Cromwell, in his agony, asked that the Lord might 
deliver him from Sir Harry Vane, so President Lincoln must 
have often cried, in his trouble, to be delivered from Horatio 
Seymour. The spirit of Mr. Seymour's action, even when the 
form Avas in compliance with patriotic duty, was such as to 
incite a spirit of resistance to the necessary policy of the 
National Administration. 

The personal aspects of this contest are so striking, and 
withal so important, that I make no apology or explanation for 
putting the considerations which grow out of them in the fore- 
front of the argument. The largest issue after all is that on 
one side General Grant is the candidate, and on the other 
Governor Seymour is the candidate. I do not recall any Presi- 
dential contest in which the personality of the two candidates 
(entered so largely into the struggle, and embodied in fact so 
much of the actual issue at stake. All the questions that grow 



GRANT AND SEYMOUR COMPARED. 101 

out of the war, all the patriotic and inspiring issues, all the 
antagonisms and hatreds, are reproduced and represented in 
these two men ; and I am sure that the contest will, in a very- 
remarkable degree, proceed, not upon mere personal differences 
between the two, but on the public questions which these per- 
sonal differences actually stand for. 

There is another feature in the Democratic position which 
serves to give point and emphasis to the meaning of their plat- 
form. Ordinarily the nomination of a Vice-President is not of 
special significance, but the Democratic Convention this year 
have made their selection of that candidate full of meaning, 
bristling, indeed, with dangerous import. General Frank Blair, 
who has many things in his past record to commend him to 
patriotic favor, has drifted, with the Blair tendency, back into 
the Democratic party. It is impossible, or rather has been 
impossible, for any one of the Blairs — the father or either of 
the two sons — to be moderate on any political issue; and so, 
at this time. General Frank Blair, having been fully re-admitted 
to the Democratic ranks, signalizes his change by out-Heroding 
Herod, running ahead of the extremists of the South. He de- 
mands that the Reconstruction laws shall simply be overturned 
by violence. He does not propose to wait for their repeal by 
Congress, or for their unconstitutionality to be declared by the 
Supreme Court, but simply that the President shall declare all 
the Acts to be null and void, — I am quoting his own words, — 
and compel the army to dispossess the carpet-bag State govern- 
ments, allow the white people to re-organize their own govern- 
ments and elect senators and representatives. Mr. Blair has 
certainly made the largest bid for the support of Southern rebel- 
dom that any Democrat has yet offered. He proposes to revolu- 
tionize the Government by force, and put the rebels in power, — 
not because they are right, not because liis proposition woidd 
be just or lawful, but simply because they are "white men."' 
Mr. Blair's nomination is a fitting supplement and complement 
to Mr. Seymour's candidacy. During the war, Blair Avas loyal 
and did gallant and valuable service in the field ; while Mr. 
Sejmiour did his best, inside the lines of prudence, to embar- 
rass the Government. In time of peace, I think it likely, if 
Mr. Seymour were let alone, that he would observe the law ; 



102 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Avliile j\Iv. Blair, having become fatigued with upholding Con- 
stitutional Government, proposes now to overthrow the law by 
violence. It would have been a better arrangement for the two 
men on the Democratic ticket to have acted together during the 
war. Certainly it would have been better for Seymour to 
have co-operated with Blair in time of war; and perhaps it 
might be better for Blair to co-operate with Seymour in time 
of peace. I have seen nothing in the menace of Governor 
Seymour's position that leads me to think he would attempt to 
overthrow the existing body of laws by violence ; and yet the 
fact that Blair took this ground in advance of the Convention, 
secured his nomination, and will in many States, so far as Dem- 
ocratic votes can contribute, strengthen the ticket. 

The platform upon which Messrs. Seymour and Blair stand 
reads as if it were written by lineal descendants of Robespierre 
and Marat, and as if the country stood on the eve of a revolu- 
tion, instead of at the close of a rebellion. In the judgment of 
the Convention which framed this indictment, every thing that 
exists in the Government at present is wrong, every law is un- 
wise, every officer is corrupt, and the people who, according to 
general apprehension, are in a state of remarkable prosperity, 
are really suffering an intolerable series of burdens, and are 
ground down by every oppression. The Democrats are deter- 
mined to tax the Government bonds, in order to impair the 
Government credit ; they are determined that there shall be no 
coin payment of Government obligations, that everybody shall 
be amnestied, and practically that the late rebels shall take 
charge of the National Administration. The platform reads, 
indeed, as if it had been w-ritten by an intensely nervous man 
just recovering from an attack of delirium tremens. 

The Republicans, according to this intoxicated platform, have 
nullified the right of trial by jury, destroyed the most sacred 
muniments of liberty, overthrown the freedom of speech and of 
the press, disregarded the rights of the people to be free from 
search and seizure, seized everybody's private papers, invaded 
the post-office and telegraph, converted the American capital 
into a Bastile, established a system of spies and official espion- 
age to which no European Government would dare resort, abol- 
ished the right of appeal on Constitutional questions. The 



GRANT AND SEYMOUR COMPARED. 103 

crazy platform further declares that the corruption and ex- 
travagance of the Government have exceeded any thing in 
history, and have, by means of frauds and monopolies, nearly 
doubled the debt created by the war. It affirms that " under 
the rei^eated assaults of these wicked Republicans the pillars 
of Government are rocking on their bases ; and in case " (here 
comes the most dreadful indictment of all) "-they shall carry 
the election and make General Grant President, we will meet 
only as a subjected and conquered people, amid the ruins of 
liberty and the scattered fragments of the Constitution." 

I am sure that it would be dignifying this tirade far too 
much to attempt to meet it with argument, or even with a 
denial. The best answer to it is to read it. Reading it, we 
can readily infer the character and aims of the men who are 
guilty of its stupendous folly. The platform will only serve 
for ridicule in the campaign, to be jeered and laughed at I But 
the real issue Avill come back to the point where it started : Do 
you not prefer Ulysses S. Grant to Horatio Seymour, as the 
next President of the United States ? And do you not think 
that Schuyler Colfax is better to be trusted, as Vice-President, 
than the man who has talked so lightl}^ threatened so loudly, 
and behaved so absurdly as General Frank Blair ? 



104 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



MR. BURLINGAME AS AN ORATOR. 



[Originally published by Mr. Blaine in the Atlantic Monthly of November, 

1870.] 

Those who were personally intimate or even casually ac- 
quainted with the late Mr. Burlingame, will remember his ease 
and fluency of speech in ordinary conversation. But writing 
was labor and weariness to liim. It seemed impossible for him 
to establish a rapid transit between his brain and the end of his 
pen. What he prepared in the way of official communication 
was graceful, strong and effective, but it was generally, if not 
always, dictated while he walked back and forth phrasing aloud 
as though he were directly addressing an eager and interested 
listener. 

Mr. Burlingame's public speeches, whether in the Legislative 
Chamber, on the American platform, or as iVmbassador at the 
courts of the civilized world, were always prepared with elabora- 
tion and with minute attention to details. But not one word 
was ever written. He possessed the singular faculty of not only 
casting the general outline of his discourse, but of ordering the 
exact style of his diction, without resorting to the use of note 
or memorandum to aid liis memory. His habit was to form 
in his mind a clear and accurate conception of the subject, 
to mark its natural divisions, analyze its connections and se- 
quences, and then, with utmost care, to frame the sentences and 
paragraphs which should make up the speech. After silently 
and thoroughly digesting the whole subject, rhetorically as 
well as logically, he would repeat the entire oration aloud, over 
and over again. He used frequently to say " that no one 
could tell how a phrase or sentence would strike the ear of an 
audience until it was tested by actual hearing." In the same 
connection, he would add that he "very often changed and 



MR. BURLINGAME AS AN ORATOR. 105 

corrected the structure of a whole paragraph on finding that the 
way he had thought it out was not the way that sounded best.'' 
Charles James Fox had no confidence in the effect upon the 
House of Commons of a speech that read well ; and Mr. Bur- 
lingame seemed to have a similar intuition in regard to the 
requirements of both the popular and the Parliamentary ear. 

With a speech thus prepared, Mr. Burlingame's delivery was 
exceedingly impressive. He spoke with the unerring correctness 
of one who had thoroughly studied his part, and yet with the 
absolute freshness and apparent spontaneity of a man who had 
sprung to his feet with the overflowing fullness of the subject 
and the uncontrollable impulse of the occasion. He had the 
remarkable gift of retaining this freshness and spontaneity, how- 
ever frequently he repeated the speech. The precision of his 
repetition was among the noteworthy features of his oratory. 
In what is termed a campaign speech it is difficult for the best- 
filled mind and the readiest tongue to make more than one com- 
prehensive and really valuable presentation of the pending 
issues. The questions to be discussed on successive days in 
one election are so entirely identical as to admit of but slight 
variation in the mode of treatment by the same speaker. The 
prince of campaign orators, Mr. Corwin of Ohio, was in the 
habit of saying " that a man who should attempt a fresh speech 
on every stump would never have any speech worth listening 
to." While, therefore, it is to be expected that a general 
similarity will of necessity pervade the speeches of any man 
who attempts to discuss the issues of a political campaign, it 
was peculiar to Mr. Burlingame to deliver day after day the 
same speech exactly, verbatim et literatim et punctuatim. He 
was wise in so doing. Any attempt to change the thread of his 
argument or to vary the felicitous illustrations of his rhetoric, 
would have deranged the entire framework of that which he 
had fitly compacted and joined together. He always kept in 
mind that he had a different audience every day, and that how- 
ever hackneyed the speech might become to himself, it was fresh 
and new to each succeeding crowd of hearers. But, in fact, the 
speech did not become hackneyed to himself, for the moment 
he faced a sympathetic audience he partook of their temper, 
grew elated with their interest and forgot in the intensity of 



106 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

to-day's magnetism tliat he was repeating the sayings of yes- 
terday. 

It was the magnetism of Mr. Burlingame that made him pre- 
eminently effective before an assembhige of the people. What 
precisely is meant by magnetism it might be difficult to define, 
but it is undoubtedly true that Mr. Burlingame possessed a 
great reserve of that subtile, forceful, overwhelming power 
Avhich the word magnetism is used to signify. It was quite 
independent of his volition, not in any sense under his control, 
and not indeed dominant over others until it had made him all 
aglow with its fiery enthusiasm. Si vis me flere^ dolendum est 
primum ipsi tihi. Mr. Burlingame was not an actor ; he never 
simulated a part, he never sought to stir his hearers with a pas- 
sion or a sentiment with which he was not himself profoundly 
stirred in advance. Mr. Webster in his description of Samuel 
Dexter as an orator, says that " the earnestness of his convic- 
tion wrought conviction in others." The earnestness of Mr. 
Burlingame was similarly effective. What he believed he be- 
lieved with such intensity, what he spoke he spoke with such 
fervor, that the unbidden impulse was " to believe and assent 
and be convinced," — we again quote Mr. Webster, — "because 
it was gratifying and delightful to think and feel and believe in 
unison with him." 

This power which Mr. Burlingame possessed was not depend- 
ent on speech, though of course it was greatly deepened and 
strengthened by it. Its influence was nevermore potential and 
commanding than at the capital of China, where, after seven 
j^ears of brilliant success as American minister, he was selected 
by the Government to represent the Celestial Empire at all the 
courts of the earth. He did not understand the Chinese lan- 
guage, did not attempt to write it, never essayed to speak it ; 
and yet, tlu-ough the l^roken circuit of an interpreter, the cur- 
rent of his magnetism reached the mandarins of Pekin as 
effectively as his living voice ever electrified a Boston audience 
in Faneuil Hall. 

This is no small praise. Indeed, Mr. Burlingame's success at 
Pekin will always remain the distinguishing feature of his re- 
markable career. The eminence he achieved, the influence he 
exerted, the reputation he acquired in China, are almost without 



MR. BURLTNGAME AS AN ORATOR. 107 

parallel. Prior to Mr. Burlingame, our country had been repre- 
sented at the Chinese court by ministers of superior training and 
commanding talent. As far back as John Tyler's day we had 
Caleb Cushing, then in the early prime of an illustrious career. 
He went to China, rich in learning, a linguist of rare attain- 
ments, with diplomatic talent of the highest order, thoroughly 
versed in International Law, possessed of an acute intellect 
singularly fitted to cope with and control the mind of the 
Orient. A few years later, in Mr. Fillmore's Presidency, 
Humphrey Marshall of Kentucky was sent to represent us at 
Pekin. Less eminent in culture than Mr. Cushing, he is 
scarcely the inferior of any man in natural ability. To the 
talent of the Marshalls, conspicuous and brilliant through four 
generations, he adds through his mother the blood and the 
brain of the Birneys. He went upon his mission when young, 
with military laurels won in the Mexican war, and with the 
further prestige of a distinguished career in Congress. Follow- 
ing Marshall, William B. Reed of Pennsylvania was sent thither 
by his devoted personal friend. President Buchanan. Mr. Reed 
has long been a leading member of the Philadelphia bar, and 
like Mr. Cushing is of generous culture outside the limits of 
his profession, in which he is regarded by those who know 
him best as among the most accomplished and most acute of 
American jurists. 

Such were the men whom Mr. Burlingame succeeded in his 
diplomatic career. It is not stating the case too strongly to 
say that at no European court did we have superior ability 
during the service of the three gentlemen we have named. Yet 
the influence of these men, with all their conceded gifts and 
accomplishments, did not compare with the influence exerted 
by Mr. Burlingame. Indeed, it was the testimony of Sir 
Frederick Bruce, who was at Pekin as the representative of 
England at the same time, that no foreign minister had ever 
gained such ascendency in the councils of the Chinese as Mr. 
Burlingame. His selection, therefore, for the most important 
mission which China ever sent to Christian nations, was not 
matter of accident or fortune, but grew naturally from the ex- 
alted estimate placed upon his ability and fitness by the leading 
minds of the Pekin Government. As an example of the influ- 



108 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

ence which one man may attain over an alien race, whose civ- 
ilization is widely different, whose religious belief is totally 
opposite, whose language he does not read or write or speak, 
Mr. Burlingame's career in China must always be regarded as 
extraordinary. It cannot be accounted for except by conced- 
ing to him a peculiar power over those with whom he came 
in contact ; a power growing out of a mysterious gift, partly 
intellectual, partly spiritual, largely physical ; a power whose 
laws are unknown, whose origin cannot be traced, whose limits 
cannot be assigned; a power which, for the want of a more 
comprehensive and significant term, recurring to our postulate, 
we designate as magnetism. 

This, in fine, was his power as an orator. It was not so much 
what lie said as his manner of saying it, that gave a peculiar 
charm and force to his words. Dependent upon this quality for 
success, he sometimes failed, for " lack of inspiration " as he 
termed it. The same speech would on one occasion carry his 
hearers to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and the triumph be 
repeated perhaps a score of times ; yet on another occasion he 
would fail. He could not become en rapport with his audience, 
and the whole speech would prove the dreariest of drudgery to 
him. His success in 1856, as an advocate of Fremont, and 
again in 1860 as a supporter of Lincoln, was a leading feature 
in each of those memorable campaigns. In New England, in 
the Middle States, in the West, he was equally and widely 
popular. It is perhaps not extravagant to assert that, so far as 
public speaking contributed to Republican victory in the nation, 
no one bore a more conspicuous and influential part than Mr. 
Burlingame. Seven years' absence from American associations 
had not diminished his sway over American audiences. His 
addresses, when he passed through our country in 1868, at the 
head of the Chinese Embassy, were full of his old force and 
fire. Had he lived to realize his cherished purpose of once more 
participating in the public and political affairs of his native 
land, he would have taken and maintained a foremost position. 
But this final triumph was not reserved for him. His career 
closed suddenly, and, to mortal vision, prematurely. He died 
at the early age of forty-seven, lamented, honored, beloved, on 
three continents. 



HORACE GREELEY AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. 109 



THE NOMINATION OF HORACE GREELEY AS A 
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. 



[Speech delivered by Mr. Blaine at Lincoln County (Me.) Republican Con- 
vention, July 27, 1872.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — In discussing the pending contest for 
the Presidency, I think it is becoming, at the outset, to tender 
our condolence to those disappointed and dissatisfied politicians 
who called the Liberal Republican Convention at Cincinnati for 
the express purpose of nominating Charles Francis Adams. In 
some way, not foreseen by the callers, delegates flocked to the 
Convention in numbers too large to be disciplined and led by 
Mr. Carl Schurz and his small band of political recusants and 
self-seekers ; and the Adams programme, though carefully 
planned, utterly miscarried in the end. Gentlemen of inde- 
pendent views, of personal character, with homes in which 
they live, and with neighbors who respect them, took control 
of the Convention : and instead of nominating J\Ir. Adams, 
they chose a man who in almost every respect radically differs 
from him. I think, indeed, it would be difficult to find 
two men of New England birth who in temper and tempera- 
ment, in mental quality, and in every characteristic that makes 
the difference between individuals, are so radically unlike as 
Horace Greeley and Charles Francis Adams. Perhaps I could 
not define the points of difference without falling into a line of 
criticism and analysis that would prove too personal for the 
amenities of public speech. Nor would it be to my purjjose. 
I have dwelt on this phase of Mr. Greeley's nomination only to 
express my gratification with the fact that the original bolters 
from the Republican party, who called the Cincinnati Conven- 
tion, feel far worse over the result of its deliberations than do 



no POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

the Republicans who remain true to their party faith and alle- 
giance. The RejDublican bolters who supported Mr. Adams 
met their discomfiture in May, and I feel quite sure that the 
friends of Mr. Greeley will meet theirs in November. 

Far more important than the action of the Republican desert- 
ers at the May Convention is that of the National Democracy 
in this month of July. In fact, Mr. Greeley's nomination by 
the deserters sinks to insignificance, in view of the fact that 
against every sense of consistency and every suggestion of pro- 
priety, with the sacrifice of almost every principle the party 
ever professed, the Democracy of the Nation, with the South 
in the lead, have selected Horace Greeley as their candidate for 
the Presidency. The loyal man has been endorsed by the 
rebel, the patriot is embraced by the traitor, the Prohibitionist 
is approved by the party of lager beer and free rum, the Pro- 
tectionist is accepted by the Free-Trader, the Abolitionist is wel- 
comed by the whole body of ancient slaveholders. Whatever 
Horace Greeley has been for the past thirty j^ears is precisely 
what the Democracy have not been : whatever he has professed 
is precisely what the Democracy have derided and denounced. 

Since the action of the Democratic Convention, we can 
plainly see what before was matter of inference and conjecture ; 
viz., that the so-called Liberal Republican Convention was 
summoned in pursuance of an agreement previously made with 
Democratic leaders, and with the distinct understanding that 
the candidate of the Republican deserters should also become 
the candidate of the Democracy ; that party fealty, political 
principle, personal pledges, ancient prejudice, hoary tradition, 
boasted record, should all l)e subordinated by the Democrac}-, 
and a coalition should be formed simply on the basis of defeat- 
ing General Grant, and taking charge of the Government with 
its power and its patronage. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that the agreement thus 
secretly made between assumed leaders never contemplated 
that the Democracy should be subjected to such a test and such 
a strain as is applied to them by the nomination of Mr. Greeley. 
The Democratic leaders had made up their minds to support 
Mr. Charles Francis Adams, and never for a moment doubted 
his readiness to respond to all Democratic demands. They 



HORACE GREELEY AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. Ill 

knew that since the death of old John Adams, no member of 
his family had ever been steadfastly true to the organization or 
the principles of any political party ; and they believed, there- 
fore, with all sincerity, that the late Minister to England, who 
saw no opportunity for further promotion in the Republican 
party, would, according to the tradition of his blood and the 
example of his father, not hesitate to unite with the Democracy 
upon the distinct understanding that the Democracy should 
first unite on him. 

Unwelcome as it was to the Democracy to substitute Mr. 
Greeley for Mr. Adams, difficult as it seemed for a time to com- 
plete the coalition on the basis of the former's candidacy, the 
old party, like many individuals engaged in a questionable 
transaction and somewhat startled by unexpected developments, 
found it, nevertheless, easier to go forward than to retreat, 
easier to put on a brazen face and a bold front than to acknowl- 
edge their inconsistency, their disingenuousness, their readiness 
to sacrifice lifelong principle for even a remote chance of the 
prestige of victory and the spoils of office. 

To cement the coalition, to add the last drop of humiliation 
to the cup which is put to the lips of the Democracy, it was 
agreed by the National Convention of that party that the plat- 
form adopted by the Liberal Republican Convention at Cincin- 
nati should be taken without dotting an i or crossing a i — 
Avith wry faces I doubt not, bvit with a loud-sounding declara- 
tion that they believed the principles announced by them to be 
"essential to just government." 

Gentlemen, this political combination is as bad as that de- 
scribed by John Randolph, wlien, with his vindictive bitterness, 
he denounced the union of the Puritan and the blackleg, and 
described it as equal in shame to the association of Blifil and 
Black George. It cannot succeed. It is a failure from the 
beginning. It is doomed to destruction from its birth. It is 
an unnatural alliance, which avenging fate will put asunder. 
You cannot unite Horace Greeley in sympathy with Jefferson 
Davis and Robert Toombs : you cannot bring him into political 
fellowship with the pirates who manned the Confederate cruis- 
ers, with the fiends in human shape who tortin-ed Union sol- 
diers at Andersonville, with the inhuman wretches who refused 



112 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

quarter to negro soldiers taken prisoners in honorable warfare 
with arms in tlieir hands. 

Coalitions, gentlemen, are proverbially weak. They are 
weak inccisely in proportion to the degree of antagonism which 
is to be allayed, precisely in proportion to the disagreements 
which are to be reconciled. As a political device coalitions are 
not new. They have been tried of old in England, and have 
ended always with defeat and sometimes with disgrace. In 
our Republican system of government, successful coalition is 
even more difficult than where aristocratic institutions restrain 
freedom of discussion and limit the sphere of independent 
action. But in the whole history of coalitions, successful or 
unsuccessful, abroad or at home, that which is now attempted 
is at once the most difficult and the — what shall I say? the 
most discreditable ? I should think Mr. Greeley would every 
mornhig awake from sleep disturbed by unpleasant visions, and 
sigh heavily for the old patriotic associates among whom his 
life and his labor have been honored, and to whom, for all these 
years, he has been guide, philosopher and friend, fireside com- 
panion and trusted counselor I 

An analysis of the Liberal Republican platform to which the 
Democratic National Convention pledged faith and fealty, will 
show how a great body of men who are ready to fight if their 
honor be challenged, will yet give pledge to uphold certain 
political principles, when in their hearts they mean no such 
thing, and when in fact tlieir partisan word is to be taken as 
lightly and held to be as meaningless as the oath of an Alsa- 
tian dicer. In the Democratic National Convention there 
Avere many delegates who either actively or by instigation and 
approval have been depriving colored voters in the South of 
all their civil rights for the past four years, and who now glibly 
vote for a resolution declaring their determination " to mete 
out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, 
color or persuasion, religious and political." When they were 
declaring this monstrous falsehood they had to seal their ears 
against the cries of their victims, and might, if they had a 
shadow of conscience left, fear that the fate of their Scriptural 
prototypes would instantly be theirs. 

To maintain and even exaggerate this ghastly farce, all the 



HORACE GREELEY AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. 113 

old Confederate soldiers who figured so largely in the Southern 
delegations to the Convention, joined heartily in the Liberal 
Republican declaration of gratitude to " the heroism and sacri- 
fices of the soldiers and sailors of the Republic." If the uni- 
ties of time and place had been observed, it would have been 
more frank and more striking for the Confederate soldiers to 
.render '■''thanks to God for their defeat in the civil war.''' If they 
jdid not feel like doing that, how could they express their grati- 
tude to their victors, and further declare that no act of theirs 
" shall ever detract from the justly earned fame of those victors 
or the full rewards of their patriotism " ? This is all so absurd 
as to be amusing. No man has ever denied or questioned the 
bravery of the Confederate soldiery, but we never lieard a 
degree of humility and resignation imputed to them that would 
entitle them to be considered kinsmen of Uriah Heep. Yet 
the Democratic platform so far overdoes the necessities of the 
situation as to degrade the proud spirit of the South, and to 
degrade it needlessly and untruthfully. 

Then, again, the repudiating element that was really repre- 
sented to a large extent in the Convention, was made to declare 
that " the public debt must be sacredly maintained, and we 
denounce repudiation in every form und guise." Not content 
with this wholesale affirmation of a faith that was not in them, 
the Convention, including the delegates who had been for years 
demanding that the public debt should be paid in irredeemable 
greenbacks, now declared that "a speedy return to specie is 
demanded alike by the highest considerations of commercial 
morality and honest government." The presumption is that in 
the Convention which made this affirmation with approximate 
unanimity, there was not, mitsicle of New England and New 
York, a baker's dozen of delegates who believed it or who 
intended to support it in the forthcoming canvass throughout 
the country. The declaration was for the political market of 
the North-East, and was silently ignored or savagely repudiated 
by the Democracy of the South-West. 

But while the Democracy seemed willing to make in their 
Convention any affirmation that was demanded of them, they 
finally struck a question on which the Liberal Republicans had 
been unable to agree. The supporters of Charles Francis 



114 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Adams were almost wholly Free-Traders, and if their plans had 
been successful, a Free-trade platform would have been sent to 
the Democratic Convention as the common ground of political 
faith and common basis of action. But the nomination of j\Ir. 
Greeley broke this plan. From his earliest participation in polit- 
ical affairs, even from his boyhood, when he warmly espoused 
the cause of Mr. Clay, it was known that Mr. Greeley was not 
only a Protectionist, but what the Free-Traders term a " crazy 
Protectionist." He could not, therefore, stand on the platform 
first designed for the 'Convention ; and per contra the Free- 
Traders who designed that platform were, of course, unwilling 
to stand on a Protection platform. There was, in fact, a broad 
and radical difference between the men who had worked for 
Adams and the men who had succeeded in nominating Greeley. 
One represented the immovable body, the other the irresistible 
force, and it was idle therefore to impel the one against the 
other. Hence a compromise was agreed upon, and certainly a 
man must be blinded by charity or by lack of knowledge who 
is willing to call it an honest compromise. Here it is. Please 
weigh its words as I read it : " Recognizing that there are in 
our midst honest but irreconcilable differences of opinion with 
regard to the respective systems of Protection and Free Trade, 
we remit the discussion of the subject to the people in their 
Congressional districts, and the decision of Congress thereon, 
wholly free from Executive interference or dictation." 

I have always noticed that the men who profess a standard 
of political faith very much higher than that of their neighbors, 
and assume the true and lofty air of the Pharisee, can always 
be expected to resort to some exceedingly dishonest practice 
or perform some very objectionable trick when temptation or 
assumed necessity demands it. When this particular trick is 
analyzed, we find this to be the resultant : — unable to agree 
on one of the leading issues before the people (I might say 
the leading issue, if its rank be determined by the number of 
voters personally interested in its settlement), the coalition 
agree that they will have no views whatever on the question ! 
Engaged in a national campaign, asking that the supreme power 
of the nation be entrusted to their hands, they yet confess that 
on a question in which millions of people are interested tliey 



HORACE GREELEY AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. 115 

have no views, and refuse to take any position. Do they 
intend, by this course, to cheat somebody? If so, wlio is to 
be cheated? Is Mr. Greeley, if made President, to cheat the 
Protectionists? or are the members of the coalition to watch 
each other, and see that neither shall cheat the other? — thus 
beginning their administration of the Government, if so grave 
a responsibility should be imposed upon them, with a greater 
dea'ree of mutual distrust than either faction would feel towards 
their common political foe. 

Fellow-citizens, it never was intended that the Government 
of the United States, or any other honorable Government on 
the face of the earth, should be administered in that insincere, 
ill-adjusted, self-contradictory mode ! The precedents of our 
administration of the Government are all against it. Common 
sense is against it, and common honesty is against it. It is not 
direct, straightforward, and candid. It has trickery for its 
basis, and knavery for its spirit, and is only invented to per- 
mit Free-Traders, like Mr. Schurz, and Protectionists, like Mr. 
Greeley, to neglect the ponderous issues of the hour, and unite 
upon the common ground of mere personal hostility and petty 
spleen against General Grant. 

The opponents of President Grant adopt the most unwise 
of policies when they seek to make personal warfare upon 
him, to cast opprobrium upon him, and to throw calumny and 
suspicion upon his good name. The strength of the President 
before the people is due, not alone to his brilliant military 
achievements, but to that vigor and directness of character, 
that rugged personal integrity, which in every relation of life 
have distinguished him. His. opponents are especially unwise 
to challenge him on his strong side. 

The result of the election will show that thousands of people 
in every loyal State, who perhaps differ from General Grant 
in certain views of public questions, will resent the imputations 
upon his character as a personal affront to themselves. The 
people of the United States feel profound gratitude to the Presi- 
dent for his illustrious services to the Union during the war, 
and they will not hear him maligned and insulted by a soi- 
disant general like Carl Schurz, without hot resentment of the 
wrong, and without contempt for the man who failed with 



116 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

the sword and tries to slander the great soldiers whom he 
could only envy, and not rival, during the war. 

In thus sketching the origin and character of what is now 
popularly known as the " Greeley movement," I have dwelt 
somewhat on its personal aspects. In the wider and more 
important field of principles which are at stake, and measures 
which are in issue, the argument is even stronger in support 
of the Republican party. In fact, the Greeley party, in its 
composite character, presents no measure, except slander of tlie 
Grant Administration. The two Conventions that nominated 
Mr. Greeley have practically copied the Republican platform, 
except on the one important question of the tariff, where, as I 
have shown, they utterly declined to express an opinion either 
way. In truth, the Democratic party has been so thoroughly 
defeated on every point it has raised during the last ten years, 
or since the beginning of the war, that its leaders are unable to 
present a single question on which they can rally and unite 
their party. 

It is really instructive as a matter of political history, aside 
from its pertinency as an argument in this campaign, to recall 
the disastrous defeats which the Democracy have met, as time 
after time they have assumed what they considered impreg- 
nable positions. After the election of Mr. Lincoln, and before 
Ms inauguration, the Democracy, North and South alike, de- 
clared the States to be sovereign, denied that they constituted 
a Nation, maintained that each State is a law unto itself and 
could not be coerced to remain in a Union from which it should 
choose to secede. That Democratic doctrine was trampled under 
foot on a hundred battle-fields, and died the death of the 
treason which it was well designed to protect. 

The next issue on which the Northern Democracy were con- 
solidated was that the war was a failure^ and that the enemies 
of the Union could not be conquered by arms. They there- 
fore demanded an armistice and a negotiation with rebels. 
This was the avowed position of the Democratic National Con- 
vention of 1864 ; and the echoes of the treasonous declaration 
had scarcely died away before the thunder of Sheridan's guns 
in the valley of Virginia pronounced it false. In a half-year 
only from the time the Democracy of the North had proclaimed 



HORACE GREELEY AS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. 117 

the impossibility of conquering the rebellion, the armies of the 
Confederacy were destroyed, and General Grant, whom the 
same Democrats are now loading with bitterest vituperation, 
was in possession of the parole of the last soldier that formed 
the army of Robert E. Lee. Thus again the Democratic party 
was put to open shame. 

But I need not pursue these abortive efforts of the Democracy 
in detail. The mere recital of them will show how often and 
how humiliatingly they have been beaten on their selected 
ground. You know how ingloriously they failed in their op- 
position to the '* Draft," and in their repeated declaration that 
a Conscription Law was unconstitutional — a position upheld 
for them by Judge Woodward, a Democratic judge of the 
Supreme Court in Peimsjdvania ; how glaringly unsuccessful 
was their hostility to the abolition of slavery ! Still greater, if 
possible, was their folly in rejecting the military aid which 
colored men could bring to the Union Army ! You remember 
how they struggled against the concession of the right of suf- 
frage to the colored man ; how they fought the Constitutional 
Amendments — Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth suc- 
cessively — fought them in Congress, in State Legislatures, and 
before popular assemblies ; how they resisted the issuing of 
legal-tender money, even when the Government needed it as 
a means of supporting the army and carrying on the war ; 
how, three years after the war had closed, they strove to injure 
our credit and blot the fair fame of the Nation by paying off 
the public debt in depreciated paper money ! 

On all these issues the Democracy have been beaten ; not in 
the ordinary sense of defeat, but in a way that left a stain of 
dishonor on the party for having attempted each time to do 
something which if successful would have left a stain of dis- 
honor on the country. On every question they have raised, the 
Republican party, by a patriotic instinct based on principle and 
guided by an enlightened public conscience, have been right, 
and being right have been triumphant. 

The Republicans will make no attack on the personal charac- 
ter of Mr. Greeley, for they know nothing against him. He 
enjoyed Republican confidence and admiration in an extra- 
ordinary degree until he showed a willingness to become 



118 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

identified with a party wliicli, according to his own repeated 
declarations, lias made an unpatriotic and mischievous record 
since 1800, and is unworthy to be trusted on a single question 
of interest and imiDortance to the people of the United States. 
Let it be the only indictment against Mr. Greeley that he has 
consented to stand as the candidate and representative of that 
party * 

The Republican party will assuredly trium[)h in this cam- 
paign — triumph first by virtue of their own merit and their 
own strength, and in part by virtue of the unwise folly of Presi- 
dent Grant's personal enemies. The people will not stop to 
scan closely whether in the proposed annexation of San Do- 
mingo, or on some other measure, the President has been always 
and exactly right. The campaign has been carried by the op- 
ponents of the Republican party beyond the discussion of par- 
ticular measures, and has become one in which the honor of 
private and puljlic character is to be defended, in which the 
fame of the chief hero of our great civil war is to be vindi- 
cated against the secret designs of personal malice and the 
coarser blows of political rancor. The fame of a great man is 
part of the Nation's imperishable treasure, and the Nation will 
rebuke those who would attempt to sully it or to destroy it ! 



SERVICE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 119 



MR. BLAINE'S SEVENTH AND LAST NOMINATION 
AS REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE 
KENNEBEC DISTRICT. 



[On the 20tli of Juno, 1874, Mr. Blaine received from tlie ReiDubliCcan Con- 
vention of the Kennebec district his seventh unanimous nomination as rep- 
resentative in Congress. Mr. Blaine's response to the nomination is given 
below.] 

Gentlemen, — Permit me to tender my profound acknowl- 
edgments to the Republicans of the Kennebec district for their 
continued manifestation of approval and regard. I have said, 
very frequently in private, sometimes in public — never, I trust, 
in a boastful or vain-glorious spirit — that I did not believe 
another Congressional District could be found in the United 
States superior to the one you empower me to represent, in all 
the elements of true patriotism ; in public and private virtue ; in 
general intelligence and culture, enforced through the common 
school, the academy and the college ; in universal thrift and 
comfort without large individual wealth ; in political convic- 
tion firm and steadfast beyond doubt or waver, and yet always 
tolerant towards those who think differently. Such a constitu- 
ency confer honor upon any man whom they call to represent 
them in the National councils, and I beg to make known my 
grateful appreciation of the trust and confidence which they 
have so long and so generously reposed in me. 

The resolutions to which you invite my attention are so 
generally acceptable to the people of the district that no issue 
will be made on the matters embraced in them. The currency 
question at one time threatening to divide parties, and, what 
would be far more serious, to divide sections, is in process of a 
happy adjustment, partly by wise and temperate enactment 
passed b}^ a large majority in both branches of Congress and 



120 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

approved by the President, but in a far greater degree by the 
operation of causes more powerful than any legislation can be. 
In these remarks I am, indeed, but repeating, in substance, 
the resolutions of your convention, and I gladly adopt as my 
own the leading declaration of the series that " it is the impera- 
tive duty of the National Government to return to specie pay- 
ment as soon as wise statesmanship can safely reach that result." 
But while our political opponents in Maine will not seriously 
contest any position taken by us, they have themselves chosen 
to raise another issue upon which we shall not be slow to differ 
from them. The Democratic State Convention, in renominating 
their candidate for Governor, adopted with suggestive unanimity 
the following resolution as the leading article in their revised 
political creed : — 

'^Resolved, That a Protective Tariff is a most unjust, unequal, oppressive 
and wasteful mode of raising the public revenues. It is one of the most 
pregnant and fruitful sources of the corruptions in administration. We 
therefore, the Democracy of INIaine, in convention assembled, declare for 
Free Trade, and in favor of an unfettered and unrestricted commerce.^' 

This advanced position, now formally taken by the Maine 
Democracy in their State Convention for the first time, receives 
additional point and meaning from the letter of their guberna- 
torial candidate. Mr. Titcomb in accepting the nomination 
specially approves this resolution, and intimates his endurance 
of the lowest form of revenue tariff, only " until we shall be 
educated up to the idea of equal, direct, and therefore moder- 
ate taxation for the support of Government, and until this 
idea shall be brought into practical operation^ I have quoted 
Mr. Titcomb's own words, and it is evident that the startling 
dogma to which he commits himself is in harmony with more 
impressive movements to be made elsewhere in the same direc- 
tion. It is first thrown out in Maine as an experiment on public 
opinion. If there were the slightest probability that the Demo- 
cratic party, with this avowed policy, would come into power, 
the dangers ahead would be truly appalling ; but as no such 
calamity impends, we may examine with coolness the absurdity 
of the proposition. 

You will observe that the issue proposed is not the old and 
familiar one between those who advocate a tariff for protec- 



FREE TRADE DEMOCRACY. 121 

tion and those who wish duties imposed only for revenue. 
That is an issue as old as the levying of imposts, and with 
occasional exceptions has been determined largely by latitude 
and longitude, or by the differing interests which change of 
section and varying forms of industry have developed. But 
the Maine Democracy assume that all tariffs are more or less 
protective, and hence they pronounce for " Free Trade,'' pure 
and simple, absolute and without qualification, or, to quote their 
own words, for " an unfettered and unrestricted commerced 

Without attempting to argue the question in its relation to 
the whole country, let us see how this new doctrine would 
affect Maine ? The process would be simple, the results readily 
deduced, the effect blighting and disastrous to the last degree. 
For some years past, the Federal Government has been collect- 
ino- a revenue of three hundred millions of dollars — to deal 
in round numbers — one-third from internal taxes, two-thirds 
from tariff duties. It is now proposed by the Maine Democ- 
racy to abolish all these duties, and have absolute " Free 
Trade " with an " unfettered and unrestricted commerce." In 
other words, the Maine Democracy propose to raise the two 
hundred millions of dollars in gold coin now obtained from 
tariff duties, by " direct taxation " or by a system of " excises " 
which might prove even more oppressive than direct taxation. 
If the tariff be abandoned there is no other mode open under 
the Constitution by which the money can be raised than the 
two named, and Mr. Titcomh declares for " direct taxation^ If 
the money is to be secured by direct taxation, it will be found 
to be Maine's great misfortune that the Constitution requires 
the tax to be levied in proportion to population and not accord- 
ing to wealth. By the ninth census, Maine has about one- 
sixtieth of the total population of the United States, and her 
share of two hundred millions of direct taxation would be 
something over three and a quarter millions of dollars in gold 
coin — the single Congressional District, whose constituents I 
am addressing, would be called upon for seven hundred thou- 
sand dollars. The peculiar hardship of raising taxes in this 
way is made manifest by the simple fact that Maine would be 
compelled to pay nearly one-half as much as Massachusetts, 
while she has but one-seventh of the property of that higldy 



122 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

favored and prosperous Commonwealth. Properly to estimate 
the exhausting and oppressive nature of this enormous tax, you 
have but to consider that it would be three times as large as the 
f)resent State tax, and would necessarily be levied in addition 
thereto. 

But if against Mr. Titcomb's policy the direct tax were 
avoided, it would be necessary to have instead of it a system 
of excises as onerous and as odious as human ingenuity could 
devise. A heavy internal tax would inevitably be levied on 
all manufactures, and indeed upon all the products of the field 
and the forest, the shipyard and the quarry ; and every form 
of industry would be burdened and borne down by the exac- 
tions of the tax-gatherer. These grievous hardships would be 
imposed on our own people, in order that foreign countries 
might have the benefit of our markets for their products, with- 
out duty and without tax. Our lumber interests, embarrassed 
and oppressed, would be compelled to compete Avith the untaxed 
products of the Canadian forest ; our manufactures would pay 
taxes for the benefit of European fabrics ; our ship-building 
would be destroyed by the taxation which would render it 
incapable of competing with Provincial bottoms, and under 
the magic spell of Democratic Free Trade our coasting and 
lake commerce, confined to t)ur own people since the founda- 
tion of the government, would be thrown open to the whole 
world. Taxation in all forms is one of the burdens of civiliza- 
tion, and instead of ameliorating its severity and, if possible, 
securing from it such compensating advantages as wise legisla- 
tion can provide, our Maine Democrats propose to make it to 
the last degree oppressive to our own people and beneficial only 
to the alien and the enemy. 

To the people of Maine, at this very moment, these extrava- ' 
gant declarations of the Democratic party have a painful sig- 
nificance, for it is well known that the authorities of Canada 
are trying to negotiate with our Government a Reciprocity 
treat}", which, like its predecessor, maintains the reciprocity all 
on one side. The treaty of that name, which was terminated 
in 1866, was cruelly oppressive to the jDCople of Maine, and in- 
flicted upon our State, during the eleven years of its existence, 
a loss of fifty millions of dollars. It presented the anomaly of 



PROPOSED TREATY OF RECIPROCITY. 123 

giving to the Canadians the control in our own markets of cer- 
tain leading articles, on terms far more favorable than our own 
people had ever enjoyed. The utmost stretch of the Divine com- 
mand is to love our neighbor as ourselves, and I can certainly 
see nothing in personal duty or i)ublic policy which should lead 
us to prefer our Canadian neighbors to our own people. 

The treaty of Reciprocity now proposed, is understood to 
include the admission of Canadian vessels to free American 
registry, and the full enjoyment of our coasting and lake trade. 
Thus the ship-building and commercial interests of the United 
States, just recovering from the terrible blows dealt by British- 
built cruisers during the war, are again to be struck down 
by giving advantages, hitherto undreamed of, to the ships 
of the very Power that inflicted the previous injury. The 
Democratic party of Maine have pledged themselves, in their 
State Convention, to the policy that includes this disastrous 
attack upon the interests of our State, and their candidate for 
Governor has fully committed himself to the extreme doctrine 
announced by the Convention. 

The form of Reciprocity proposed by the Government of the 
Dominion of Canada lacks every element of the seductive 
title by which it is sought to commend it to our people. 
What is it? Simply this — that if the United States will agree 
to admit certain Canadian products, free of duty, Canada in turn 
will agree to admit certain American fabrics free of duty. But 
the class of men to be benefited, and the class to be injured, in 
the United States, are entirely distinct and separate, having 
nothing in common, either in locality, industry or investment. 
To compensate for the surrender of one interest by the advance- 
ment of another has no more element of reciprocal justice in it 
than for A to take a i)air of horses from B, because C took pos- 
session of a yoke of oxen belonging to D. To illustrate : If the 
United States will agree to admit Canadian vessels to American 
registry and the coasting-trade, Canada will admit straw hats, 
mule harness and rat-traps free of duty. In this you will ob- 
serve that Canada gets the full advantage both ways, while the 
United States, for a possible enlargement of petty trade, consents 
to subordinate and sacrifice an interest that represents our dis- 
tinctive nationality, in all climes and upon all seas — an interest 



124 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

that has given more and asked less of the Government than any 
other of similar magnitude ; an interest more essentially Amer- 
ican, in the highest and best sense, than any other which falls 
under the Legislative power of the Government, and which 
to-day asks only to be left where the founders of the Republic 
placed it nearly a century ago. 

Against the whole policy of adjusting revenue questions by 
the treaty-making power, I desire to enter on behalf of my 
constituents an emphatic protest. The Constitution gives to 
the House of Kepresentatives the sole and exclusive right 
to originate Bills of Revenue, and this great power should be 
kept where it can be controlled by the direct and unbiassed 
vote of the people. It may well be that sundry articles of 
Canadian product should be admitted free, or with diminished 
duty : it may well be, also, that Canada would find it advanta- 
geous to admit certain articles from us free of duty. Let each 
country decide the question for itself, and avoid the " log-roll- 
ing" feature of a treaty, in which it will inevitably happen that 
certain interests will be sacrificed in order that others may be 
promoted. Let us simply place Canada on the same basis with 
other foreign countries, — taxing her products, or admitting 
them free, according to our own judgment of the interest of our 
own revenue, and the pursuits and needs of our own people — 
always bearing in mind, that in governmental as in family 
matters, " charity begins at home," and that " he who provideth 
not for those of his own house, is worse than an infidel." 



MUNICIPAL DEBT IN THE UNITED STATES. 125 



MUNICIPAL DEBT IN THE UNITED STATES. 



[An address delivered by James G. Blaine before the Northern Wisconsin 
Agricultural aud Mechanical Association, at their annual fair held at Oshkosh, 
Wisconsin, Oct. 1, 1874.] 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Association, — 
When I accepted your cordial invitation to be present to-day, 
it was with the distinct understanding that the formal address 
of the occasion should be delivered by another, and that any 
thing I might have to say would be secondary and subordinate. 
This arrano'ement was changed a short time since without con- 
suiting me ; and if this large audience shall feel disappointed 
with the result, as I fear they may, they must not lay the charge 
at my door, but hold the officers of the Association responsible 
in such exemplary damages as a good Wisconsin sense of jus- 
tice may impose. 

I believe by modern usage an address before an agricultural 
society is expected to leave agriculture severely alone — on the 
very sound and sensible presumption that the audience have 
more knowledge on that subject than the speaker is likely 
to possess. In my own case, certainly, I am ready to admit 
the full force of such presumption ; for although I was born 
and reared in an agricultural community in Western Pennsyl- 
vania, and have lived all the years of my maturer life in the 
best agricultural district of Maine, I do not claim such practi- 
cal knowledge of the great art and science as would enable 
me to give one word of needed instruction to the assemblage 
which I have now the honor to address. 

I shall, therefore, for the brief period that I may claim your 
attention, confine myself to a subject of interest to you as 
American citizens — and indeed, I may add, of especial im- 
portance to you as farmers, representing as you do so great 



126 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

a proportion of the real property of the country, and standing 
as you (h) in the attitude of responsibility, both present and 
ultimate, whicli that relation to the property of the country 
implies and imposes. 

I shall speak to you of our public debt — not mainly of what 
we understand as our national debt — but of all those forms of 
State and municipal obligation which involve direct taxation 
upon the people.* 

Public debt is one of the rapid out-growths of modern civili- 
zation. In its present form it was certainly unknown among 
the ancients, though Cicero says that the Roman Provinces in 
Asia were accustomed to borrow ; and Livy, in a passage some- 
what obscure, speaks of a loan once contracted by Rome to 
meet the expenses of the Punic wars. These exceptional ref- 
erences, however, only prove the rule that the use of credit was 
not one of the recognized resources of ancient nations. The 
large accumulation of treasure made by some powerful monarchs 
of the olden time is another proof that credit was not used, 
and that loss resulting from the idleness of money was not 
recognized or appreciated as it is by the keener calculations 
of modern times. Ptolemy Philadelphus had at one time in 
his treasury what would be equivalent to 8400,000,000 in our 
coin. The Roman Emperor, Tiberius, left 2,700,000,000 sester- 
ces (1110,000,000) to his successor, Caligula, who obligingly 
spent the whole of it in a single year. These sums, though 
they do not seem large in comparison with the aggregates of 
the national debts of to-day, j^et represent in their purchasing- 
power in that era a larger accumulation of actual money than 
the treasury of any nation has contained at one time since the 
dawn of Christianity. The first Napoleon, among modern 
rulers, imitated on a diminished scale this barbaric accumula- 
tion of treasure, nominally belonging to the State, but really 
subject to the individual will and caprice of the sovereign, and 
generally used for purposes whicli would not make a creditable 
appearance in official budgets or regular appropriation bills. 

Nearly sixteen hundred years of the Christian era had passed 
before nations learned the art of borrowing as we now under- 
stand it. Holland and Spain had perhaps in the sixteenth cen- 
tury the first regularly organized national debt, though it is 



MUNICIPAL DEBT IN" THE UNITED STATES. 127 

claimed that the French Bentes, the national security still so 
well known and so poimlar among that people, originated as 
early as 1375, in the reign of Charles the Fifth. I am disposed 
to think, however, that it was, in a very irregular, shadowy, and 
irresponsible shape, running over only from year to year accord- 
ing to chance, and not existing as a stated loan with stipulated 
and regular allowance of interest. 

Undoubtedly the debts of Holland and Spain, contracted 
largely in their wars with each other, the one attempting to 
inflict, and the other successfully resisting, a great tyranny, 
were the first that became regularly funded, with periodical 
payment of interest, the resources for which were derived from 
taxation. So sorely were these taxes felt at Amsterdam, as an 
accurate historian tells us, that it was a common saying, that 
whoever bought so much as a fish paid for it once to the seller, 
and six times to the State. In Spain at that time the receipts 
of the precious metals from her South-American colonies were 
so large that the deljt was not so oppressive as the corresponding- 
obligation in Holland. 

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, England 
emerging from the struggle for Constitutional Liberty which 
forever dethroned the Stuarts, formally entered for the first 
time the list of National debtors. It was in 1694 that she 
borrowed the initial pound sterling of that debt which in one 
hundred and twenty years, at the close of her contest with 
Napoleon, reached the enormous aggregate of nine hundred 
and two million pounds (£902,000,000) — over four thousand 
five hundred millions of dollars (14,500,000,000) — constituting 
at that time a burden upon England as great as a debt of twelve 
thousand millions of dollars (-112,000,000,000) would represent 
to-day. From the date of England's becoming a borrower, debt 
seemed to be a contagion among the nations — and though less 
than two centuries have elapsed since England's debt began, 
there is now scarcely a civilized country on the face of the 
globe whose people have not mortgaged the future for the 
benefit of the past and the present. The British dependencies 
in Asia and Australia and the " far off Isles of the sea " are 
Jieavily in debt to the bankers of the mother country ; the civil- 
ized and semi-civilized governments that skirt the shores of the 



128 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Mediterranean are mortgaged to the money-lenders of Europe ; 
the nations of South America without exception have all trodden 
the same weary road ; while every European power from Russia 
to Portugal groans under the weight of its national obligations. 
Mr. Dudley Baxter, who is a recognized authority on ques- 
tions of this character, gives the aggregate populations of the 
borrowing nations of the world as in excess of six hundred 
million souls (600,000,000) — and the aggregate of national 
debts owed by them as equal to twenty thousand millions of 
dollars (-$20,000,000,000) — with an annual interest charge of 
more than eight hundred millions of dollars ($800,000,000). 
It is a melancholy thought that this almost incalculable sum of 
money was borrowed and expended, not to promote the ends 
of peace, not to develop agriculture or the mechanic arts, not to 
build great highways for commerce and trade, not to improve 
harbors and the navigation of rivers, not to found institutions 
of learning or of charity or of mercy, not to elevate the stand- 
ard of culture among the masses, not for any or all of these 
laudable objects, bat for the waste, the cruelty, the untold 
agonies of war. The vast mass of this prodigious sum-total 
not only went for war, but for wars of ambition and conquest 
in which the fate of reigning dynasties was the stake, and 
not the well-being of the people or even the aggrandizement of 
the nation itself in the higher and better sense. In our own 
country we have had four wars — and with the exception of 
that with Mexico, they may certainly and fairly be called 
defensive on our part — for they were assuredly wars essen- 
tial to our national existence and independence. But still 
this fact makes us no exception to the rest of the world, and 
war, however unavoidable in our case, was nevertheless the 
direct cause of our national burden. Our total national in- 
debtedness to-day is twenty-one hundred and forty millions 
of dollars (-f 2,140,000,000) ; and of this great sum sixty-four 
millions ($64,000,000) given towards the construction of a rail- 
road to the Pacific is all that was incurred for works of peace. 
The remainder was expended in the long and bloody and deso- 
lating struggle in which secession was resisted and destroyed, 
and in which we won the privilege of continuing to exist as 
the United States of America. 



MUNICIPAL DEBT IN THE UNITED STATES. 129 

But in regard to the National debt, whatever vain regrets we 
may indulge over the loss of so much treasure and the fearful 
sacrifice of that which is beyond earthly price, we have this to 
console — that the war which gave rise to it was unavoidable, 
apparently forecast as part of the great experience of bitterness 
and of blood through which it was our destiny as a nation to 
pass, and that out of its sorrowful depths we have emerged a 
regenerated people, doing justice to a race long oppressed, edu- 
cating ourselves to higher standards of liberty and of law, and 
having our feet henceforth shod with the preparation of the 
Gospel of Peace. 

Leaving the consideration of our National debt as an obliga- 
tion not witlnn our discretion, except as to the best and most 
honorable means of reducing and discharging it, I invite your 
attention to those less observed, but even more burdensome 
forms of obligation contracted by States, counties, cities and 
smaller municipalities, and contracted oftentimes, I may add, 
with an extravagance and prodigality that seem to invite calam- 
ity. With the keen watchfulness of opposing political organi- 
zations in this country, with the sharp criticism by press and 
people of all that may be done or left undone by Congress, no 
oppressive increase of our National debt can be anticipated ex- 
cept under the exigency of war — and should that come, as in 
God's good Providence I trust it never may, no limit can be 
assigned to the additional burden that may be placed upon us. 
But the causes which lead to an increase of State debt and to 
so great an enlargement of municipal obligation are not so open 
to public observation, do not elicit the sharp controversy and 
discussion which always go so far to insure safety in the final 
result, and the consequence is that many communities, before 
they stop to consider, find themselves laboring under a burden 
of debt, which if not absolutely discouraging is certainly 
oppressive. 

In reflecting on this subject you will observe at the very 
outset that our form of Government gives extraordinary 
opportunities for the use of public credit. We have first 
the General Government, whicli borrows on the faith of the 
Nation ; next the State Government, which borrows on the faith 
of the State ; next the county, which borrows on the faith of 



130 EOLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

the county ; next the city or town, wliich borrows on the faitli 
of the numicipality. When this whole series of credits, four 
in number, are used as they often are, nay, used almost 
everywhere, the quadruplicate burden falls heavily on the 
shoulders of the people. The four taxes operate at last on 
the same man, and each piece of property in some way con- 
tributes its share towards satisfying the demand. I do not 
think there is any other nation in which the power to incur 
debt has been so extended as with us ; in which the same com- 
munities may be made to assume public obligations in so many 
relations — and each one operating for the time in a somewhat 
independent sphere, the tendency of each is to enlarge, regard- 
less of the dimensions and demands of the others. When the 
city is pledging its credit it seems to forget that a heavy debt is 
already upon the county of which it forms an integral part; 
the county freely incurs debt without apparently remembering 
that every estate in it is already encumbered by a direct tax to 
pay the interest on a debt of the State ; and the State too often 
makes lavish use of its credit without pausing to reflect that 
every one of its citizens is already burdened by the tax which 
he is paying to liquidate the debt of the Nation. When in 
the end, Nation and State and county and city have each and 
all imposed their burdens, the citizen finds that while the tax is 
increased fourfold the property to meet it has not experienced 
a similar development and growth. Our power in this country 
to cumulate our burdens may certainly be regarded as peculiar 
to ourselves. I am aware that the large cities of Europe have 
debts of their own ; so have the separate cantons of Switzer- 
land ; so have the departments of France for limited and speci- 
fied purposes ; so have the minor German states ; but still it is 
true that our county, city, town and township facility for con- 
tracting debt is practically unknown among the nations of 
Europe. Our marvelous capacity in this regard is the one 
achievement of our Republican civilization of which I think we 
have the least occasion to be proud. 

There are in the United States sixteen cities having each a 
population exceeding one hundred thousand (100,000), and an 
aggregate population of four and a half millions (4,500,000). 
Each is a city with special advantages which cannot be taken 



MUNICIPAL DEBT IN THE UNITED STATES. 131 

from it ; each in the language of the day has a lai-ge future ; 
each has abundant wealth and still larger prospective resources. 
They include when taken collectively, the trade of Atlantic and 
Pacific, of Gulf and Lake coasts, besides all the great interior 
rivers of the continent and the converging traffic of thousands 
of miles of railway. Surely one would think that each might 
bide its time and patiently await its well-assured prosperity 
without ])eing compelled to borrow largely, in some cases almost 
recklessly, of the future. And yet taking these sixteen cities 
together we find their municipal debts amount to three hundred 
and fifty millions of dollars ($350,000,000), being eighty dollars 
per cajyita for their entire population, and presenting in the 
aggregate an amount which prior to our war experience would 
have been considered a large burden for the Nation. It would 
be a gross injustice, however, to leave the inference that the 
average debt of these cities is over twenty millions of dollars, 
for indeed a single city, the commercial metropolis of the nation, 
presents a debt of nearly one-third of the entire amount, while 
several of the cities on the list have debts of comparatively 
insignificant proportions. 

The class of cities next in size to those referred to, those 
having each a population exceeding fifty thousand (50,000) 
and less than one hundred thousand (100,000) are twelve in 
number — having an aggregate population of about seven hun- 
dred and fifty thousand (750,000). Their total debt does not 
exceed thirty millions of dollars ($30,000,000), which gives 
about forty dollars per capita for the whole list. 

Taking the next class of cities, having each a population 
exceeding twenty thousand (20,000) and less than fifty thou- 
sand (50,000), I find there are in all some fifty-three (53) in the 
United States with a total population of something over a million 
and a half. Their total debt cannot be less, I think, than sev- 
enty-five millions of dollars ($75,000,000), or fifty dollars per 
capita. 

Interested as I have been in making these investigations, I 
included one more class within the scope of my inquiries, and 
took the cities and towns throughout the United States, having 
populations between ten and twenty thousand each, — a list 
which I found to include in all one hundred and five cities and 



132 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

towns, whose aggregate population amounts to nearly fourteen 
hundred thousand (1,400,000), and whose aggregate debt is 
something over thirty-five millions (■$'35,000,000), or about 
twenty-two dollars per capita for the whole. 

Adding these four classes together, it presents a table of the 
cities and towns of the United States having over ten thousand 
(10,000) inhabitants each — of which there are in all one hun- 
dred and eighty-six (186) — with an aggregate population ex- 
ceeding seven millions (7,000,000), and total municipal debt of 
about four hundred and ninety millions (1^400,000,000). 

The towns having less than ten thousand inhabitants each, I 
have not been able to classify with the approximate accuracy of 
those I have given, but I feel well assured that the aggregate 
of their debts would reach eighty millions of dollars ($80,000,- 
000), — making the total municipal debt of the country about 
five hundred and seventy millions (8570,000,000). 

Added to these municipal debts proper, Ave find the county 
debts of the entire country amounting to about one hundred 
and eighty millions (1180,000,000), and the State debts to 
about three hundred and ninety millions ($390,000,000), — 
making a grand aggregate of eleven hundred and forty millions 
($1,140,000,000) of i)ublic debt of States, counties, cities, and 
towns. 

This sum-total is nearly three hundred millions of dollars 
greater than that given in the census of 1870. The addition, 
however, has not been made within the four succeeding years, 
but a part is due, I think, to incomplete returns made to the 
census officials. I have been at some pains, by original investi- 
gation and inquiry, to ascertain the aggregates of State, county, 
and municipal indebtedness ; and while I do not assume to give 
details, or vouch for absolute accuracy, I think the totals I have 
given may well be taken as approximately correct statements. 
The difficulty in attaining perfect exactness results from the 
imperfect manner in which statistics are gathered in the several 
States. I have found, indeed, very few States where the officers 
are authorized by law to keep a record of public debt, except 
the direct obligations of the State. In Massachusetts, where 
great attention is paid to accuracy of statistics, I have been 
enabled to obtain precise information, and the total amount 



MUNICIPAL DEBT IN THE UNITED STATES. 133 

of State, county, and municipal debts, shows a grand total of 
ninety-seven and a half millions ($97,500,000), subject to a 
sinking-fund deduction of eleven millions ($11,000,000) — 
leaving eighty-six and a half millions ($86,500,000) as the 
net debt of that State. A very large burden it would seem ; 
and yet such is the wealth of Massachusetts that the entire 
debt does not constitute more than four per cent of its valua- 
tion, and probably not over two and a half per cent of its 
actual wealth. 

The State debts in many instances, both in the former and 
the latter times, have been contracted without due caution, 
and as a natural consequence the money realized from borrowing 
has been oftentimes expended with an extravagance which 
would hardly be tolerated in the disbursement of moneys raised 
by current taxation. I do not desire to make my remark so 
sweeping as to include those States where loans have always 
been negotiated with care, and the receipts expended with econ- 
omy. But I venture the assertion, based on careful scrutiny 
of the facts, that, taking the aggregate of State debts as they 
stand to-day, there has not been realized on the average fifty 
cents of permanent value for each dollar raised and expended. 
In some cases the improvidence has led to even worse results 
than this ; and I think, taking the country as a whole, there is 
no form of public debt in which so much has been given and 
so little received as in the direct obligations of the States. I 
am glad, however, to be able to congratulate the citizens of this 
rich and prosperous Commonwealth, that their debt is very 
small, and is rapidly decreasing, and that in consequence there- 
of an inexpensive government and light taxation are their com- 
forting prospects for the future. What is true of your State, is 
no less true of your sister States of this great section. The 
seven States of the North- West, with an aggregate popula- 
tion of more than eleven millmis (11,000,000), and property 
worth over eight thousand millions of dollars ($8,000,000,000) 
have a combined State debt of less than twenty-five millions 
($25,000,000). If these Commonwealths had exercised as pru- 
dent a care against county and municipal debt, they would 
present to-day the most flattering balance-sheet, I venture to 
say, of any civilized communities on the face of the globe. 



134 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

In regard to the aggregate municipal debt of the country, it is 
not of course to be inferred that it could all have been wisely 
avoided. Credit, prudently used and safely guarded, is one of 
the great engines of modern civilization and advancement, and 
Avitli niunicii)al governments its use at times seems imperatively 
demanded. In many cases the public health has required that 
debt be contracted for supplies of pure water and for systems 
of drainage and sewerage, and occasionally for other forms of 
public improvement essential to the growth of the community. 
But in tlic main, I think our cities have been too ready to draw 
on the future, too ready to pledge the " lives and fortunes " of 
posterity to the payment of a debt which the generation in- 
curring it is unable to discharge. Expensive municipal build- 
ings, loan of credit to outside enterprises, not needed and often 
visionary, have led in some large cities to a growth of debt for 
which there is no corresponding return of pecuniary profit, and 
no adequate advantage in any form. These debts have in many 
cases been contracted carelessly and without due reflection. 
The old adage that what is " everybody's business is nobod} 's 
business " is nowhere more applicable than in the general ad- 
ministration of municipal affairs in our large cities. It is so 
easy to obtain Legislative authority to contract debts ; it is 
so easy to sell a good city bond to the capitalist who highly 
prizes such forms of security; it is so easy to incur a debt to be 
taken care of by those who come after us, instead of levying a 
severe tax to be paid by ourselves ; in short, it is so easy and 
alas so natural to have a smooth, pleasant time to-day, thinking 
little of the ills that may overtake us on the morrow. This ready, 
convenient, lazy method of shifting the burdens of to-day, has 
tended to precipitate on many of our most favored and promis- 
ing cities a load of taxation, Avhich hampers business, oppresses 
property, hinders accessions of population, and thus retards the 
very growth which the debt was contracted to stimulate. 

Another evil results from the growth of municipal debt 
which I think has not been sufficiently observed. I mean the 
facility which such debts give to the capitalist for a safe and 
profitable investment of his sur])lus — thus saving him from 
the trouble, and depriving the community of the advantage, of 
his embarking in active business. Take for instance a promi- 



MUNICIPAL DEBT IN THE UNITED STATES. 135 

nent and wealthy city — and I do not refer to any particular 
one — and this you will find to be its history and experience at 
one or more periods of its prosperous career^ Its banks and 
other places of deposit are full to overflowing of money owned 
by its leading capitalists, waiting for an opportunity to invest. 
They are carefully examining into different branches of manu- 
facture, into improvement of real estate by blocks of fine stores, 
into the outlook for a new railroad, into a project for a new 
line of steam-packets — all or any one of ^vhich would greatly 
contribute to the development and growth of the city in ques- 
tion. At the moment these capitalists are about to invest their 
money in some one of these channels of gain to themselves, and 
profit to the community, another set of gentlemen having great 
influence with the municipal officers, commit the city to some 
new scheme of improvement. From three to five millions of 
first-class seven per cent bonds are placed on the market — and 
our capitalists suddenly conclude that nothing presenting so 
little risk and so clean a margin of profit can be found in manu- 
factures, or blocks of stores, or railway shares, or steam naviga- 
tion companies, and they accordingly invest their odd millions 
in city bonds, and devote themselves thenceforth to the enno- 
bling occupation of cutting coupons. 

Though the foregoing purports to be a single case, it illus- 
trates a practical truth worthy to be remembered, viz. : that too 
much of the surplus capital has been invited into bonds of this 
kind, and is thereby removed from active participation in the 
business projects of the country. These projects are thus left 
too largely to the control of men who have great enterprise, 
but who are hampered for lack of capital and are constantly' 
encountering the evils of a too widely extended credit. It may 
be an extravagant assertion, and yet I had almost said, that if 
the hundreds of millions of capital that have been hidden away 
in the munici})al bonds of the country had been, by the absence 
of such opportunities for investment, forced into business enter- 
prises, the country would be so much the richer that a great 
number of the objects for which the municipal debts were con- 
tracted could have been accomplished by the mere process of 
taxation on the vastly superior amount of property that would 
have been thus created. 



136 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

It is also a matter for serious consideration whether tliese 
large municipal loans have not had a prejudicial effect on the 
price of money, tending continually to create stringency in 
the money market and raise the rate of interest to the borrower 
and the business man. There is a loud outcry in all quarters 
against the high rates charged for money, and yet if States and 
great cities will flood the markets with their obligations at 
seven per cent and oftentimes at a higher rate of interest, how 
can any borrower on mere individual credit expect or hope to 
negotiate loans at the old-fashioned six per cent rate, which 
in so many sections of the country was formerly the rule. It 
will inevitably happen that the individual citizen will pay from 
one to four per cent higher for money than the prosperous city ; 
and if the city absorbs the great surplus of capital by its tempt- 
ing rates and perfect security, the individual is necessarily sub- 
jected to the squeezing process when he wants money on his 
own note, and he is then made to feel the double burden of 
paying increased taxes to support the city loan, the negotiation 
of which had already increased his burdens by raising the rate 
of interest on the money he was compelled to borrow in the 
prosecution of his private business. 

If then we have not exercised sufficient care and circum- 
spection in regard to incurring State, county and municipal 
debt in the past, what is the remedy ? I answer, first and fore- 
most, an awakened, active, well-balanced public judgment, 
which will suggest and enforce a wise caution and conserva- 
tive course on this subject. I have no patent remedy to 
propose, and yet I venture to suggest that the Legislatures 
of many States have altogether too large a power to create 
debt without referring the subject to the people for their pri- 
mary consideration. Perhaps I may entertain a pre-judgment 
on this particular phase of the question in favor of the stringent 
provision in the Constitution of my own State, where the 
Legislature has no power to incur a dollar's debt except for 
war purposes, under the pressure of actual danger, and where 
an amendment to the Constitution proposed by two-thirds of 
the Legislature and then submitted to a vote of the people, is 
a prerequisite for pledging the credit of the State for any other 
purpose whatever. 



MUNICIPAL DEBT IN THE UNITED STATES. 137 

It might also be a wise and salutary provision to define in State 
Constitutions the precise ends for which municipal credit should 
be used, limiting those uses to proper and restricted objects, 
and forbidding in any event the creation of a debt beyond a 
specified percentage of the official valuation of the city or town. 
At the same time a judicious safeguard should be provided 
against the overlapping of county debts, so that while the town 
is guarding its credit with care it shall not be involved in the 
embarrassment caused by an extravagant extension of the credit 
of the county. 

Finally, as a governing principle, it would be well to apply 
to all State, county and municipal debts, the wise precaution 
contained in that famous rule laid down by Mr. Jefferson as 
the basis of all sound National credit. I quote the words of 
the great philosophic statesman, as equally applicable to all 
possible forms of public obligation, and as affording a basis 
at once secure for the creditor and advantageous for the 
debtor : — 

" Never borrow a dollar without laying a tax at the same instant, for 
paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term ; and 
consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith. On such 
a pledge as this, sacredly observed, a government may always command 
on a reasonable interest, all the lendable money of its citizens ; whilst the 
necessity of an equivalent tax is a salutary warning to them and their con-, 
stituents against oppression, bankruptcy, and its inevitable consequence, — ^ 
revolution." 



138 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE CONSTITU- 
TIONAL AMENDMENTS. 



[A speech delivered by Mr. Blaine at a Republican meeting in Mechanics' 
Hall, Worcester, Massachusetts, Oct. 28, 1874.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — In every political campaign it is impor- 
tant to ascertain the dividing line between parties, to find out 
precisely what separates them, to determine whether the issue 
that separates them is worth fighting over. Is there any ques- 
tion at issue between the two parties to-day of sufficient moment 
to interest you as intelligent American citizens — any question 
of sufficient magnitude to decide your vote ? 

I think there is, and I tliink it is a question of far greater 
moment than the currency or the tariff, or anti-monopoly, or 
railroad or bank questions. It is a question which goes to the 
very root of all the political controversies of to-day ; it is a 
question which lies at the foundation of American citizenship; 
it is a question of maintaining inviolate the provisions of the 
Federal Constitution. 

The war has been over nearly ten years! What are the 
fruits of it ? What do you point to as the result of it ? You 
have half a million of graves filled with heroic dead : you have 
a larger number of heroic wounded still living. You have 
spent an immense sum of money; you have an immense vol- 
ume of debt ; you have heavy taxation. Are these to be called 
the imperishable fruits of the war? Alas, not! They are the 
sorrowful calamities of the war ! The dead will be forgotten, 
the debt will be paid, taxes will be reduced, and the genera- 
tions to come will read of these things as painful traditions. 
But the result of that war is imperishable — imperishable 
through the changes in the fundamental laws of your country. 



DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN 1874. 139 

I beg you all to remember tliat a change in the Constitution 
of the United States is a matter of great moment. It is exceed- 
ingly difficult to accomplish. It was purposely made difficult 
by the founders of the Government. Legislation goes by majori- 
ties : an Act of this year may be repealed the next — but the 
organic law cannot be changed so readily. Our fathers ordained 
that it should require tAvo-thirds of the Senate and two-thirds 
of the House of Representatives of the United States to do even 
so much as propose to the people to amend the Constitution. 
And when proposed they made it a requirement that three- 
fourths of all the States should assent before any change should 
be ratified and become effective. In the progress of the civil 
conflict it became a settled conviction in the minds of all patri- 
otic men, Republicans and Democrats alike, that if the war 
was to end victoriously for the Union a blow must be struck at 
slavery, first by the emancipation proclamation, then by an 
amendment to the Constitution ; and the Thirteenth Amend- 
ment to the Constitution, perfected in 1864, made it impossible 
— in language originally applied to another country but appli- 
cable here — that a slave could breathe the air of the United 
States and live. 

It was soon found that the mere fact of stripping the mana- 
cles of slavery from a man makes him only a freedman, not a 
freeman. It was also very soon found that although the Thir- 
teenth Amendment referred primarily and only to the colored 
man, yet there was a cognate question of citizenship, of equal 
interest to the white man, and that if this Government was to 
abide and be strong that question must be settled. For up to 
that time, Mr. Chairman, there was nothing in the Constitution 
of the United States, there, was nothing in our laws, there was 
nothing in the judicial decisions of the Government, that you 
could put your hands on and say, this constitutes citizetisJiip of 
the United States. There was no standard — nothing that dis- 
tinctively luade you or me a citizen of the United States. In 
the Constitution it was written that " the citizens of each State 
shall enjoy the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the 
several States ; " and the meaning of that ought to have been 
so clear that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err 
therein, and that the running man might read. It meant very 



140 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

plainly that if I, a citizen of Maine, chose to come and cast my 
fortunes with the citizens of Massachusetts, I was entitled to 
all the privileges and immunities that you enjoy as citizens of 
Massachusetts, and, vice versa, if you chose to come to Maine 
you should have the same rights that we enjoy there. 

As between Maine and Massachusetts, and as between Mas- 
sachusetts and all the States westward to the Pacific, north 
of a certain line of latitude, this was an effectual guaranty, 
realized and not denied. But the moment you went south of 
a certain line of latitude, whether you were a colored man or a 
white man holding certain obnoxious opinions, your citizenship 
was not worth the paper on which your name was inscribed on 
the register of the hotel at which you were a guest. Tliis was 
not a mere sentiment — it was not a fancied grievance. It was 
an outrageous discrimination, leading to bad feeling and bad 
blood and to grave wrong. Take an illustration in my own 
State, largely engaged in commerce. A ship would sail from 
Portland for Charleston, S.C., and among her crew there might 
be two or three colored men. When that ship reached Charles- 
ton those colored men were placed in prison, detained there 
while the ship was engaged in loading, and when the ship was 
ready to sail, if the captain would pay the expenses of incar- 
ceration, the men were released, or if he refused, they were sold 
into slavery for life to pay the expenses of tlie imprisonment. 
But if on the same <lay an English ship arrived at Charleston, 
with any number of colored sailors on board, the city authorities 
did not lay the weight of a finger upon their heads. 

We thus helplessly witnessed the galling fact that the Ameri- 
can Hag, in an American port, was less a measure of personal 
protection than the British flag in an American port. This 
was a thing not to be endured. Massachusetts took it up. She 
sent an agent to South Carolina to test the question in the 
courts of law. The venerable Samuel Hoar of Concord, father 
of the distinguished gentleman who represents this district in 
Congress, was selected for the mission. The older portion of 
my audience will remember that he was driven out by a mob, 
and his life barely saved by some considerate people in Charles- 
ton, who seemed to appreciate the great and lasting disgrace 
that shedding his blood would bring upon that city. 



DEMOCRATIC TARTY IN 1874. 141 

Thus it stood after the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. 
The shackles of slavery were torn from these men, but was 
any thing conferred upon them that enabled them to defend 
their own freedom ? In connection with this was there not some- 
thing of interest to you and to me — white men? The Repub- 
lican party thought so, and being a party of progress they 
determined to incorporate into the Constitution of the United 
States an amendment, that should define American citizenship, 
white and black, native and foreign born, in unmistakable 
terms, and for all time. That was the origin of the Fourteenth 
Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. 

Let us look at the language of that amendment. " All per- 
sons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to 
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of 
the State wherein they reside." 

Mark you then : " all persons," no matter what their color, 
black or white, blonde or brunette — no matter where born, 
native or naturalized : The Constitution says, " all persons born 
or naturalized in the United States are citizens thereof, and of 
the States wherein they reside." That is the affirmative part 
of the amendment. But the negative is still more suggestive, 
for it contains a most weighty inhibition — let me read it. " No 
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States." 

Mark you again, gentlemen, " privileges or immunities." 
Your right to vote ; your right to your own creed ; your right 
to your personal liberty — no State shall make any law to inter- 
iere with them : " Nor shall any State deprive any person of 
life, or liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor 
shall any State deny to any person within its jurisdiction the 
equal protection of the law." This is the spirit of the Four- 
teenth Amendment to the Constitution. And then these signifi- 
cant words are added, that " Congress shall have power to 
enforce the provisions of this amendment by appropriate legis- 
lation." 

Fellow-citizens, that amendment was passed in Congress by ^ 
the Ivei)ublican vote, with every Democratic vote opposed. It 
was passed in three-fourths of the State Legislatures, with every 
Republican vote in every Legislature in favor of it, and every 



142 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Democratic vote in every Legislature opposed to it, and to this 
hour there has never been in any convention of the Democratic 
party, National, State, county, or district, a single declaration 
so far as I have seen agreeing to abide by and enforce that 
amendment. 

The sententious Democratic platform of New York, inspired 
by Mr. Tilden and written by Mr. Manton Marble, now quoted 
by Democrats everywhere, most significantly omits all approval 
of the Fourteenth Amendment. It simply professes obedience 
to the Constitution and laws. Yes ; but do you consider the 
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to be parts 
of the Constitution ? The great Democratic leader, Jeremiah 
Black, has answered you. He says those amendments should 
be put in process of gradual extinction, and the Democratic 
party must put them in process of gradual extinction. 

The Republican party, empowered by Congress to legislate 
under those amendments, proceeded to do so, and they passed 
what has been derisively styled the " Kuklux law " by hot par- 
tisans. You have read in the Democratic papers a great deal 
of abuse heaped upon the Kuklux law. Pray, now, what is 
that law? Strip it of its legal verbiage, and it is simply this: 
that if any citizen of the United States shall receive an injury 
in his person or his property, and the local authority is unable 
or unwilling to protect and redress him, then it is the duty 
of the United States Government to step in and do it. So 
long as the State authority shall discharge its duty (as tlie 
State of Massachusetts, the State of Maine, and the great body 
of the States do), there is no necessity for invoking Federal 
interposition ; but when State supervision is not given, and 
when the citizen is left without redress, then, according to 
the Kuklux law, it is the duty of the Federal Government 
with all its powers to vindicate the citizen in all his rights. 

It is on that point the Democratic party takes issue with us. 
You draw a line of demarcation, and upon that side stands every 
Democrat, and upon this every Republican. Let me read you 
the last confession of faith in the last National convention of 
the Democratic party. This is what the platform of two years 
ago in the Presidential struggle said : " Subject to our Constitu- 
tional obligations to maintain the equal rights of citizens, our 



DP:M0CRATIC party in 1874. 143 

policy shall aim at local govermneut and not at centralization, 
and there shall be no Federal subversion of the internal policy 
of the several States, but each shall be left free to enforce the 
rights and promote the well-being of its inhabitants by such 
means as the judgment of its own people shall dictate." 

Wherefore, if a man happens to be maimed or half mur- 
dered by Kuldux klans in Alabama or Louisiana, it must prove 
a great comfort to his wounded body and bruised spirit to hear 
that the great Democratic party of the United States says that 
the National Government sliall not interfere, but that the local 
Government shall " promote the well-being of its inhabitants by 
such means as the judgment of its own people shall dictate." 
The meaning of all this is, that the community inflicting the 
outrage shall organize themselves into a jury to try themselves 
for having done it. No matter how much you may be mal- 
treated by any community, no matter if you are warned to 
leave in twenty-four hours, no matter what your injury may be 
in the forfeiture of your estate and the abuse of your person, 
you must look for your redress wholly to the villains who in- 
flicted the outrage — you cannot in any stress ask the United 
States to intervene in your behalf. 

I hold in my hand an official report made by a select com- 
mittee of both branches of Congress, and I find that the Union 
men, both black and white, murdered in the South since the 
war closed, are greater in number than those who lost their lives 
in the Mexican war and in the war of 1812 combined. More 
men have been wounded in the South than Avere wounded in 
the Mexican war and in the war of 1812. Yet the Democrats 
coolly remand you to local self-government, and obligingly tell 
you that there is no power in the Federal Government to inter- 
vene in your behalf. We all know, gentlemen, that remanding 
the man who is injured, in the great majority of these cases of 
Southern outrage, to the local authorities, is the greatest farce 
in the world, or would be if it were not so ghastly a tragedy 
of blood. You send him who has been outraged by a band of 
villains, to be tried by that band itself, while the United States, 
according to Democratic authority, has no right whatever to 
intervene. Assuredly, we present most extraordinary contra- 
dictions on this question of citizenship, the most extraordinary 



144 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

in this, that if an American citizen be harmed in any respect 
by a foreign government, we at once liy into a tempestuous 
rage, order naval vessels into commission, summon the army, 
start all the diplomatic functions of the Government, display 
in every form our readiness and our eagerness to vindicate that 
man at the expense of blood and treasure. It has been so 
always, regardless of party, I might give you a hundred cases 
if I had time. Let me give you two extreme cases : I select 
them because of their extraordinary character. I will give you 
a Democratic precedent and then a Republican precedent. 

A little more than twenty years ago the first happened. 
After the revolution in Germany, in 1848, and in consequence 
of it, a large emigration came to this country. Among those 
emigrants a man who settled in the State of New Jersey de- 
clared his intention to become a citizen of the United States. 
He never went farther. He was not fully naturalized. He 
never paid a cent of taxes, local. State or national. He never 
voted. In the language of our Maine statute, he never had any 
" last or usual place of abode ; " and without going a single 
step beyond what I have stated, that man went back to Europe, 
and finally engaged in trade in the city of Smyrna, in Asia 
Minor. In 1853 he was arrested by an Austrian official, and 
was about to be taken to Vienna to be tried for high treason by 
the Austrian Government. He appealed to the American con- 
sul for protection. He stated his case truthfully, like a man, — 
stated just what a shadowy claim he had upon citizenship in this 
country. The consul felt doubtful, but he called into confer- 
ence Duncan Ingraham, of the United States Navy, who was in 
the harbor with a vessel-of-war, and after conferring upon the 
case, they agreed that the man ought to be protected, and Cap- 
tain Ingraham sent a polite note to the authorities of Smyrna 
saying that if Martin Costa was not put aboard his vessel in 
twenty-four hours, he would bombard and destroy the city. A 
gentle intimation of that kind, with twenty columbiads behmd 
it, is a very persuasive sort of argument, and the man was put 
on board and brought back to this country, and William L. 
Marcy of New York, one of the greatest of the past generation 
of Democratic statesmen, i)ublished an able paper, vindicating 
Costa's right to American protection. 



DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN 1874. 145 

Let me give you a Republican precedent of later date which 
happened indeed only four years ago. In the long-continued 
revolt in Cuba, there was one John Emile Howard, who fell 
under the power of the Spanish Government. It was alleged 
that he had been aiding and abetting the rebellion, in that he had 
given his medical services to the rebel army. He had given 
some medicine, or set a broken limb, or done some act of mercy 
to suffering^ humanity. The Spanish officials arrested him, tried 
him by a drum-head court-martial, and sentenced him to fourteen 
years* imprisonment in a penal colony on the coast of Africa, — 
a sentence worse than death. That man appealed to this Gov- 
ernment for protection, sent his memorial to a Democratic rep- 
resentative, Mr. Samuel J. Randall, of the city of Philadelphia, 
and Mr. Randall presented the case to the House. 

The facts in that memorial were these : This man was the 
son of a French emigrant wdio came to America after the down- 
fall of Napoleon in 1815, and settled in Philadelphia. The 
father was naturalized fully and completely, and the naturaliza- 
tion carried with it that of his minor children, of whom this 
man was one. He grew up in Philadelphia, graduated at the 
Pennsylvania University, took his degree, and in 1840 went 
to the island of Cuba. He never returned ; he never paid a 
tax here, never voted here ; performed no act of citizenship 
whatever in any State of the American Union. But he had 
done nothing to denationalize himself; he had never sworn 
allegiance to any other government ; he had kept steadily burn- 
ing in his heart a desire to return to that which to all intents 
and purposes to him w^as his native land. 

The House of Representatives upon that memorial, the facts 
being ascertained and corroborated, passed a resolution, by an 
almost unanimous vote, requesting the President of the United 
States to interpose in his behalf. Presidei>t Grant did so, and 
our minister at Madrid, General Sickles of New York, was in- 
structed to demand Howard's release ; not on the ground, mark 
you, that the man had not done what he was charged with 
doing, but on the ground that whether he had or not, he was an 
American citizen, and was entitled, by our treaty with Spain, 
to be tried in a certain manner — not by court-martial — and 
not having been tried according to treaty stipulation, he was 



146 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

not legally held, and hence our minister to Spain, under the 
instruction of President Grant, demanded his release. The 
Spanish Ministry, always proud and unyielding, hesitated and 
raised quibbles, and did not want to give liim up at all. 

Finally, they said they would pardon him. General Sickles 
was promptly instructed not to accept a pardon, because a par- 
don implied guilt — implied that the man had been rightfully 
tried. General Sickles refused to accept his pardon, and after 
a little further diplomatic delay and hesitation, the Spanish 
Government gave him up, and he came back to his ancient 
home in the city of Philadelphia. 

These are extreme cases. Compared with the citizenship 
which you and I enjoy — which you, the naturalized men in 
this audience, and you, the native born men — Costa and 
Howard had but shadowy claims, and yet they had enough to 
call forth the whole power of the Government to vindicate their 
right. I do not mean to dissent from the decisions made, but 
I do not understand, and cannot be made to comprehend, how a 
government that has an arm long enough and strong enough to 
reach to the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and pluck a 
man from the hands of Austrian power, and on the other side, 
to reach over the Atlantic and beyond the Pyrenees, and take a 
man from the hands of Spanish tyranny, has not power enough 
to reach down into Alabama and South Carolina and protect 
its own citizens both native born and naturalized. 

Within sixty days your attention has been called to a very 
traoical case in Tennessee. A brutal mob of white citizens as- 
saulted a crowd of innocent colored men, killed five of them, 
and maimed eleven others. President Grant, through the 
department of justice, was intervening for their protection, 
when he withheld his power, on the assurance of Governor 
Brown of Tennessee that he was about to put all the enginery 
of the State in motion in order to punish the authors of the 
crimes. But you will observe that whether Governor Brown 
had done this or not, the Democratic doctrine denies the right 
of the President of the United States to intervene. See the 
inevitable absurdity which this Democratic doctrine involves. 
It those sixteen citizens of the United States had received that 
injury on British soil, our Government would have promptly 



DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN 1874. 147 

and most empliatically demanded reparation for the slain and 
recompense to the wounded. The demand would have been 
made at the mouth of the cannon. Or, if on the other hand, 
those sixteen colored men had been subjects of Queen Victoria, 
doing lawful business in Tennessee, and had been thus out- 
raged and mobbed, Great Britain would have promptly de- 
manded reparation from the United States. So that, whether 
these men had been American citizens on British soil, or 
British subjects on American soil, they would in either case 
have been sustained by the enginery of a great nation for their 
vindication ; but having the misfortune to be simply American 
citizens on American soil, the modern Democratic doctrine is 
that there is no power in the Constitution or laws of the Repub- 
lic whereby they can be protected or their rights vindicated. 

The majesty and might of a nation are measured, fellow- 
citizens, by no standard so accurately as by the degree of pro- 
tection given to their citizens or subjects. It is altogether idle 
to preach loyalty to a people unless loyalty brings protection. 
What did you fight for in the late war ? Was it for a mere 
abstract idea, or for a great and strong Government, that should 
protect you and your children to the latest generation, in their 
rights of person and property? If you went out and fought 
for a Government that was willing to take your blood and for- 
tune, and not willing, in return, to extend its protection to yon, 
you are a deluded and defrauded man. I beg you, my friends, 
whether you be native born or naturalized, whether you be rich 
or poor, not to pass this idly by on the assumption that you are 
in no danger — that this, in the vulgar language of the cam- 
paign, is only a "• nigger question." The strength of a column 
is the strength of its weakest part, and I tell you the strength 
of government protection to citizenship is not that which goes 
out to the wealthy and the influential, to the strong and the 
mighty, but it is that which protects and upholds the lowly, 
the poor and the weak. 

I said in the earlier part of my remarks, and I here repeat, 
that I have never known a case where any authorized expo- 
nent of the Democratic party, in convention or elsewhere, has 
given any expression in favor of the enforcement of the Thir- 
teenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. If there be 



148 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

such a case I should like to have it pointed out to me. While 
I can find no exposition of the party in favor of enforcement 
of those amendments, I can find numberless instances where 
they resolve that those amendments shall not be maintained. 

I hold in my hand an official copy of the report of the joint 
committee of the two Houses of Congress upon the Kuklux con- 
spiracy. Out of numberless quotations from the report of the 
Democratic minority that I might make I read you this : Refer- 
ring to the dominance of the Republican party as the cause of 
these amendments, the minority declare, " But whenever that 
party shall go down, and go down it will some time not long in 
the future, that will be the end of the political power of the 
negro among white men on this continent." Among the 
Democrats who announced this extraordinary position were 
Mr. Bayard of Delaware and General Blair of Missouri. 

The talk of these Democratic senators is very plain. It 
means, if it means any thing, that the Thirteenth and Four- 
teenth Amendments are to be nullified — nothing else. Let me 
read you something still more significant: "Gradually," suy 
these same Democrats, "in time, under a change of circum- 
stances, this exceptional state of the popular mind," that is, the 
state of the popular mind that upholds these amendments, " will 
change, wear out, and pass away, and public opinion will vibrate 
back to its old condition as it existed prior to tl^e disturbing 
influences of the war." 

This, mark you, is an official declaration that secured the 
approval of every Democrat in both branches of Congress. 
Take them on their word : what does it mean by " vibrating 
back to the point where it was before the disturbing influences 
of the war"? If it means any thing, it means that the negro 
will ultimately go back into slavery. You withdraw all the 
National authority; you leave those States according to the 
platform upon which Horace Greeley stood as a Presidential 
candidate — you leave those States to settle this question for 
themselves under Mr. Tilden's doctrine of to-day, and very 
quickly they would settle the condition of the colored men. 

These facts lead me to say, and I consider it the closing indict- 
ment of the case, that it is not the "white leagues" of the 
South, it is not the misguided, disappointed, crushed rebel with 



DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN 1874. 149 

whom the danger lies, but it lies at the door of the Northern 
Democracy. If to-day you will root out of the minds of the 
Southern Democrats the conviction that a Democratic trium]3h 
in this country is to bring about the precise state of things 
you have in that minority report, you will make loyal men out 
of them in a moment. They do not live by their own passions. 
They live by the comfort, assurance and hope which they 
receive from Massachusetts and other Northern States, and 
most of all from the city and State of New York. 

I venture therefore to say that for the disturbed condition of 
things at the South to-day the Democratic party of the North 
is principally if not solely responsible. Let the Northern 
leaders of that party declare as patriotic men that they accept 
the Constitutional amendments in good faith. Let them say to 
Southern men : ' You must accept these amendments with all 
that they imply and all that they include, as the legitimate 
fruits of the war. They may offend, they may grate upon your 
prejudices, they may irritate and chasten, but in the judgment of 
those who have the care and keeping of this great government, 
they have been considered essential to the preservation of the 
future, and you must submit.' Let that word go forth from the 
Democrats of the North, and there will be no further disturb- 
ance in the South — none whatever. Let that go forth from 
any Democratic convention, especially let it go from a conven- 
tion with the prestige and power of that which in New York 
lately nominated Mr. Tilden for governor — still more, let it 
go from a Democratic convention with the prestige that put 
Horatio Seymour six years ago before the people for President, 
and you will end the entire trouble in the South. 

I venture to go farther : let conventions be dumb. National 
and State, and I will name you fifty Democrats whose word of 
assurance will end the trouble. Yes, I venture even to sro 
farther still, and as in ancient times if ten righteous men had 
been found in Sodom the wrath of God might have been averted 
from the cities of the plain, so this day and this hour I can name 
you ten Democrats, and two of them shall be from New York, 
who, if with the weight of their character and the might of 
their influence, they shall speak peace to this country on the 
Southern question, will give it peace ! 



150 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



SHALL JEFFERSON DAVIS BE RESTORED TO 
FULL CITIZENSHIP? 



[On the tenth day of January, 1S7G, Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania called up a 
bill (of which he had given previous notice) relieving all persons in the United 
States from the disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Article of Amendment 
to the Constitution. 

Mr. Blaine of Maine proposed an amendment, in the nature of a substitute 
(of which he had also given previous notice), that "all persons in the United 
States under the disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment, with the 
exception of Jefferson Davis, late President of the so-called Confederate States, 
shall be relieved of such disabilities, upon their appearing before any judge of a 
United States Court, and taking and subscribing an oath that they will support 
and defend the Constitution of the United States, and bear true faith and alle- 
giance to the same." 

Mr. Eandall declined to admit the amendment, and demanded the previoua 
question, which was sustained by yeas 164, nays 100. The Amnesty Bill was 
then put upon its passage, and, requiring a two-thirds vote, it was defeated, ayes 
175, noes 97. 

Mr. Blaine immediately rose, and addressed the House. His speech is given 
below.] 

Mr. Speaker, — I rise to a privileged question. I move to 
reconsider the vote which has just been declared. I propose 
to debate the question at issue, and now give notice that if the 
motion to reconsider shall be agreed to, it is ray intention to 
oifer the amendment which has been read several times. I will 
not delay the House to ask that it be read again. 

Every time the question of amnesty has been introduced, 
during the last two Congresses, by a Democratic member, it 
has been done with a certain flourish of magnanimity which 
seemed to convey an imputation on this side of the House. It 
seemed to charge the Republican party, which has been in con- 
trol of the Government for the last fifteen years, with being 
bigoted, narrow, and illiberal, grinding down certain gentlemen 
in the Southern States under a great tyranny, from which the 



SHALL JEFFERSON DAVIS BE AMNESTIED? 151 

hard-heartedness of this side of the House constautly refuses to 
relieve them. 

If I may anticipate as much wisdom as ought to characterize 
the gentlemen on the other side of the House, this may be the 
last time that amnesty need be brought to the attention of Con- 
gress. I desire, therefore, to place on record precisely what the 
Republican party has done in this matter. I wish to place it 
there as an imperishable record of liberality and magnanimity 
and mercy far beyond that which has ever before been shown 
in the world's history by conqueror to conquered. 

I entered Congress at the same time with the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Randall], Avhile tlie hot llame of war was yet 
raging, when the Union was rocking to its foundations, and when 
no man knew whether we were to have a country or not. I 
think the gentleman from Pennsylvania would have been sur- 
prised when he and I were novices in the Thirty-eighth Con- 
gress, if he had been told that before our joint service ended 
we should see sixty-one gentlemen, who were then in arms 
against us, admitted to the privileges of membership in this 
body, and all by the grace and magnanimity of the Republican 
party. When the war ended, according to the universal usage 
of nations, the Government, then under the exclusive control 
of the Republican party, had the right to determine what should 
be the political status of the people who had suffered defeat. 
Did the Republicans, with full power in their hands, inaugurate 
any measure of persecution ? Did they set forth on a career 
of bloodshed and vengeance ? Did they take the property of 
the Southern people who had rebelled ? Did they deprive any 
man of his civil rights? 

Not at all. Instead of a general and sweeping condemnation, 
the Republican party placed in the Fourteenth Amendment to 
the Constitution only this exclusion : — 

"That no person .?ha]l be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or 
elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, 
under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken 
an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or 
as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer 
of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have 
engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or com- 
fort to the enemies thereof. But Congress niay, by a vote of two-thirds of 
each House, remove such disability." 



152 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

It has been variously estimated that this section at the time 
of its original insertion in the Constitution included from four- 
teen to thirty thousand persons. As nearly as I can gather the 
facts of the case, it included about eighteen thousand men in 
the South. It did not apply to the hundreds of thousands — 
or millions, if you please — who had been engaged in the attempt 
to destroy this Government, It held under disability only 
those who, in joining the rebellion, had violated a special and 
peculiar and personal oath to support the Constitution of the 
United States. It was limited to these. 

That disability, Mr. Speaker, was hardl}^ placed upon the 
South before we began in this hall and in the other wing of the 
Capitol, when more than two-thirds of the members in each 
branch were Republicans, to remit it, and the very first bill 
removed the disability from 1,578 citizens of the South. The 
next bill removed it from 3,526 others. Amnesty was thus 
granted by wholesale. Many of the gentlemen on this floor 
shared the grace conferred on those occasions. After these bills 
had passed, with several smaller bills specifying individuals, 
the Congress of the United States in 1872, still being two-thirds 
Republican in both branches, passed this general law : — 

" That all political disabilities, imposed by the third section of the four- 
teenth article of amendments of the Constitution of the United States, are 
hereby removed fi-om all persons whomsoever, except Senators and Repre- 
sentatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the 
judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of depart- 
ments, and foreign ministers of the United States." 

Since that measure passed, a very considerable number of the 
gentlemen whom it still left under disability have been relieved 
specially, by name, in separate Acts. But I believe, Mr. 
Speaker, in no instance since the Act of May 22, 1872, have the 
disabilities been removed, except upon respectful petition to 
the Congress of the United States from the person interested. 
I believe in no instance, except one, have they been refused 
upon the petition being presented. I believe in no instance, 
except one, has there been any other than a unanimous vote 
for removing the disability. 

I find there are widely varying opinions in regard to the 
number that are still under disabilities in the South. By con- 



NUMBER UNDER DISABILITY IN 1876. 153 

ference with the Department of War and of the Navy, and 
with the assistance of some records which I have cansed to 
be searched, I am able to state to the House, I believe with 
substantial accuracy, the number of gentlemen in the South 
still under disabilities. Those who were officers of the United 
States army, educated at its own expense at West Point and 
who joined the rebellion, and are still included under this Act, 
number, as nearly as the War Department can state it, 325 ; 
those in the Navy about 295. Those under the other heads 
— Senators and Representatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty- 
seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial service of the 
United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers 
of the United States — make up a numljer somewhat more 
difficult to state accurately, but estimated at 125 to 130. 
The entire list, therefore, is about 750 persons now under 
disabilities out of the great unnumbered host that eno-acred in 
the rebellion. 

I am very frank to say that in regard to all these gentlemen, 
save one, I do not know any reason why amnesty should not 
be granted, as it has been to many others of the same class. 1 
am not here to argue against it. The gentleman from Iowa 
[Mr. Kasson] suggests "on their application." I agree with 
him on that point. But in the absence of the respectful form 
of application, which since May 22, 1872, has become a sort of 
common law as preliminary to amnesty, I simply wish to make 
it a condition that they shall go before a United States court, 
and, with uplifted hand, swear that they will conduct them- 
selves as good and loyal citizens of the United States. That 
is all. 

Gentlemen may say that this is a foolish exaction. Possibly 
it is. But I confess I have a prejudice in favor of it. I insist 
upon it, because I do not want to impose citizenship on any 
gentleman. If I am correctly informed, and I state it on ap- 
parently good authority, there are some gentlemen in this list 
who have spoken contemptuously of resuming citizenship, and 
have spoken still more contemptuously of applying for citizen- 
ship. I may state it erroneously, and if I do I am ready to 
be corrected ; but I understand that Mr. Robert Toombs has, 
on several occasions, at watering-places, both in this country 



154 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

and in Europe, openly and })ul)liely stated tliat he would not 
ask the United States for citizenship. 

I insist, therefore, that if Mr. Robert Toombs is not prepared 
to go into a court of the United States, and swear that he hon- 
estly intends to be a good and loyal citizen, he may live and 
die outside of that great privilege. 1 do not think that the 
two Houses of Congress should convert themselves into a joint 
convention for the purpose of embracing Mr. Robert Toombs, 
and requesting him to favor us by coming back and accepting 
the honors of citizenship. All we ask on this side of the House 
is, that each of these gentlemen shall show his good faith by 
coming forward and taking the oath, which all the members on 
this floor take, and are proud to take. It is a very small exac- 
tion to make as a preliminary to full restoration to all the rights 
of citizenship. 

In my amendment, Mr. Speaker, I have excepted Jefferson 
Davis from amnesty. I do not place his exclusion on the 
ground that he was, as he has been commonly called, the head 
and front of the rebellion, because I do not think the exception 
would be tenalile. Mr. Davis was in that respect as guilty, 
no more so, no less so, than thousands of others who have 
received the benefit and grace of amnesty. Probably he was less 
efficient as an enemy of the United States, probably he was 
more useful as a disturber of the councils of the Confeder- 
acy, than many who have already received amnesty. It is not 
because of any particular and special damage that he above 
others did to the Union, or because he was personally or espe- 
cially of consequence, that I except him. But I except him on 
this ground: that he was the responsible author, knowingly, 
deliberately, guiltily, of the great crime of Andersonville. 

I base his exclusion on that ground; and I believe to-day, 
that so rapidly does one event follow on the heels of an- 
other in the age in which we live, that even those of us who 
were contemporaneous with the war, and especially those who 
have grown up since, fail to remember the crime at Ander- 
sonville. 

Since the gentleman from Pennsylvania [iNIr. Randall] intro- 
duced this bill last month, I have taken occasion to re-read 
some of the historic crueltieb of the world. I have read once 



CRUELTY OF GENERAL WINDER. 155 

more the details of those atrocious murders by the Duke of Alva 
in the Low Countries, which are always mentioned with a thrill 
of horror throughout Christendom. I have refreshed my mem- 
ory with the details of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, that 
stands out in history as another of those atrocities beyond 
imagination. I have read anew the liorrors of the Spanish 
Inquisition. But neither the deeds of the Duke of Alva in 
the Low Countries, nor the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, 
nor the thumb-screws of the Spanish Liquisition, surpass the 
hideous crime of Andersonville. This is not matter of mere pas- 
sion but of proof. Thank God, Mr. Speaker, that while this Con- 
gress was under different control from that which exists here 
to-day, with a Committee composed of both sides and of both 
branches, that tale of horror was placed where it cannot be 
denied, and where it must remain as a warning. 

I hold in my hand the story written out by a committee of 
Congress. I state that Winder, who is dead, was sent to An- 
dersonville with a full knowledge of his previous atrocities in 
Richmond. These were so terrible, that Confederate papers, 
the Richmond Examiner for one, after Winder had gone thanked 
God that Richmond was rid of his presence. We in the North 
knew from returning skeletons what Winder had accomplished 
at Belle Isle and Libby ; and, fresh from those accursed cruel- 
ties to his fellow-men, he was sent by Mr. Jefferson Davis, 
against the protests of others in the Confederacy, to construct 
this den of horrors at Andersonville. 

It would be utterly beyond the scope of the occasion, and 
beyond the limits of my hour, to go into full details. But in 
arraigning Mr. Davis, I will not ask any one to take the testi- 
mony of a Union soldier. I ask gentlemen of this House to 
take only the testimony of men who themselves were engaged 
in and devoted to the Confederate cause. If that testimony 
does not entirely justify the declaration I have made, then 
I will take prompt occasion to state that I have been in error 
in my reading. 

After detailing the preparation of that prison, the arrange- 
ments made with studied cruelty for the victims, the report 
which I hold in my hand, and which was concurred in by 
Democratic members as well as Republican members of Con- 



156 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

gress, gives a condensed description of the horrors — and I 
beg members to hear it, for it is far more impressive than 
any thing I can say. After giving full details, the ^ report 
states : — 1 

"The subsequent history of Andersonville has startled and shocked the 
world with a tale of horror, of woe, and death before unheard and unknown 
to civilization. No pen can describe, no painter sketcli, no imagination 
comprehend its fearful and unutterable initiuity. It would seem as if the 
concentrated madness of earth and hell had found its final lodgement in the 
breast of those; who inaugurated the rebellion and controlled the policy of 
the Confederate government, and that the ^irison at Andersonville had been 
selected for the most terrible human sacrifice which the world has ever seen. 
Into its luirrow walls were crowded thirty-five thousand enlisted men, many 
of them the bravest and best, the most devoted and heroic of those grand 
armies which carried the flag of their country to final victory. For long 
and weary months here they suffered, maddened, were murdeied, and died. 
Here they lingered, unsheltered from the burning rays of a tropical sun by 
day, and drenching and deadly dews by night, in every stage of mental and 
physical disease, hungered, emaciated, starving, maddened ; festering with 
unhealed wounds ; gnawed by the ravages of scurvy and gangrene ; with 
swollen limb and distorted visage ; covered with vermin which they had no 
power to extirpate ; exposed to the flooding rains which drove them drown- 
ing from the miserable holes in which, like swine, they burrowed ; parched 
with thirst, and mad with hunger ; racked with pain, or prostrated with the 
weakness of dissolution ; witli naked limbs and matted hair ; filthy with 
smoke and mud ; soiled with the very excrement from which their weakness 
would not permit them to escape ; eaten by the gnawing worms which their 
own wounds had engendered ; with no bed but the earth ; no covering save 
the cloud or the sky ; these men, these heroes, born in the image of God, 
thus crouching and writhing in their terrible torture and calculating barbar- 
ity, stand forth in history as a monument of the surpassing horrors of An- 
dersonville, as it shall be seen and read in all future time, realizing in the 
studied torments of their prison-house the ideal of Dante's ' Inferno ' and 
Milton's 'Hell.'" 

I venture the assertion, from reading the testimony upon 
which the report is based, that this description is not overdrawn. 
I will read but a single paragraph from the testimony of Rev. 
William John Hamilton, a Catholic priest at Macon, who, I 
believe, never was in the North. He is a Southern man, and 
a Democrat, and a Catholic priest. And when you unite those 
three qualities in one man, you will not find much testimony 
that would be strained in favor of the Republican party,- 
or any member of it. 

This man had gone to Andersonville on a mission of mercy to 
the men of his own faith, to administer to them the rites of his 
church in their last moments. That is the way in which he 
happened to be a witness. I will read his answer under oath to 



TESTIMONY OF REV. WILLIAM JOHN HAMILTON. 157 

a question addressed to him in regard to the bodily condition of 
the prisoners. He said, — 

" Well, as T said before, when I went tliere I was kept so busily engaged 
in giving the sacrament to the dying men that I could not observe much, but 
of course I could not keep my eyes closed as to what I saw there. I saw a 
great many men perfectly naked [their clothes had been taken from them by 
rebels, as other testimony shows], walking about the stockade perfectly nude. 
They seemed to have lost all- regard for delicacy, shame, morality, or any 
thing else. I would frequently have to creep on my hands and knees into 
the holes that the men had burrowed in the ground, and stretch myself out 
alongside of them to hear their confessions. I found them almost living 
in vermin in those holes ; they could not be in any other condition but a filthy 
one, because they got no soap, and no change of clothing, and were there all 
huddled up together." 

Let-Mne read further, from the same Avitness, a personal de- 
scription : — 

" The first person I conversed with on entering the stockade was a coun- 
tryman of mine, a member of the Catholic Churcli, who recognized me as a 
clergyman. I think his name was Farrell. He was from the north of Ire- 
land. He came toward me and introduced himself. He was quite a boy. 
I do not think, judging from his appearance, that he could have been more 
than sixteen years old. I found him without a hat, and without any cover- 
ing on his feet, and without jacket or coat. He told me that his shoes had 
been taken from him on the battle-field. I found the boy suffering very 
much from a wound on his right foot, — in fact, the foot was split open like 
an oyster, — and, on inquiring the cause, they told me it was from exposure 
to the sun in the stockade, and not from any wound received in battle. I 
took off my boots, and gave him a pair of socks to cover his feet, and told 
him I would bring him some clothing, as I exj^ected to return to Anderson- 
ville the following week. I had to return to ^lacon to get another priest to 
take my place on Sunday. When I returned, on the following week, on 
inquiring for this man Farrell, his companions told me he had stepped 
across the dead-line, and requested the guards to shoot him. He was not 
insane at the time I was conversing with him." 

Mr. Speaker, I do not desire to go into such horrible details 
as these for any purpose of arousing bad feeling. I wish only 
to say that the man who administered the affairs of that prison 
went there by order of Mr. Davis, was sustained by him, and 
the Rev. William John Hamilton, from whose testimony I have 
read, states again that he went to General HoAvell Cobb, com- 
manding that department, and asked that intelligence as to the 
condition of affairs there be transmitted to the Confederate gov- 
ernment at Richmond. There are many proofs to show that 
Mr. Davis was thoroughly informed as to the condition of 
affairs at Anderson ville. 

One word more, and I shall lay aside this book. When the 



158 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

march of General Sherman in the Atlanta campaign was in 
progress, there was danger, or supposed danger, that his army 
might come into the neighborhood of Andersonville ; and the 
following order, to which I invite the attention of the House, — 
a regular military order, — Order No. 13, dated. Headquarters 
Confederate States Military Prison, Andersonville, July 27, 
1864, was issued by Brigadier-General John H. Winder: — 

" The officers on duty and in charge of the battery of Florida artillery at 
tVie time will, npon receiving notice that the enemy liave api)roached within 
seven miles of this post, open fire upon the stockade with grape-shot, with- 
out refei'ence to the situation beyond these lines of defence." 

Here, within this horrible stockade, were thirty-five thousand 
poor, helpless, naked, starving, sickened, dying men I The 
Catholic priest to whom I have referred states that he begged 
General Howell Cobb to represent that, if these men could not 
be exchanged, or could not be relieved in any other way, they 
should be taken to the Union lines in Florida and paroled ; for 
they were shadows, they were skeletons. Yet it was declared 
in a regular order, issued by the commandant of the prison, who 
had been specially selected by Mr. Davis, that if the Union 
forces should come within seven miles, the battery of Florida 
artillery should open fire with grape-shot on these shadows and 
skeletons without the slightest possible regard to what was 
going on outside. And they had stakes put uj) with flags in 
order that the line of fire might be properly directed from the 
battery of Florida artillery. 

I mention only one additional horror in this dark valley of 
cruelty and death. When one of the tortured ^'ictims escaped 
from its confines — as was sometimes though not often the case 
— he was remorselessly hunted down by bloodhounds. In a 
single month twenty-five escaped, but in tlie official record 
kept by the notorious Wirz " they were taken by the dogs before 
the daily returns toere made out.'''' 

Mr. Speaker, the Administration of Martin Van Buren, that 
went down in a popular convulsion in 1840, had no little of ob- 
loquy thrown upon it because it was believed that the Seminoles 
in the swamps of Florida had been hunted with bloodhounds. 

Bloodthirsty dogs were sent after the hiding savages, and 
the civilization and Christian feeling of the American people 



BLOODHOUNDS AT ANDERSONVILLE. 159 

revolted against the cruelty. I state here, upon the testimony 
of witnesses as numerous as would require me all day to read, 
that bloodhounds were used at Andersonville ; that large packs 
of them were kept, and Confederate officers directed them on 
the hunt; that they were sent after the poor unfortunate, 
shrinking men who by any accident could get out of that hor- 
rible stockade. 

I do not wish to be understood as arraigning the Southern 
people for these inhumanities. God forbid that I should charge 
sympathy with such wrongs upon the mass of any people. 
There were many evidences of great uneasiness in the South 
about the condition of Andersonville. I know that leading- 
officers of the Confederacy protested against it. T know that 
many of the subordinate officers protested against it. I know 
that a distinguished gentleman from North Carolina, now rep- 
resenting his State in the other end of the Capitol, protested 
against it. But I regret to say that these wrongs were known 
to the Confederate Congress, they were known at the doorway 
of their Senate, along the corridors of their Capitol. A gen- 
tleman whom I see at this moment, who served in the Confed- 
erate Congress, and who had before served in the Senate of 
the United States, brought them to the attention of the Confed- 
erate Congress, and I class him with those whose humanity was 
never burned out by the angry fires of the rebellion. I allude 
to the Honorable and' now venerable Henry Stuart Foote. 

It is one of the rank offenses of Jefferson Davis, Mr. Speaker, 
that besides conniving at the cruelties at Andersonville, he 
concealed them from the Southern people. He labored not 
only to conceal them, but to make false statements about them. 
We have obtained, and have now in the Congressional Library, 
a complete series of Mr. Davis's messages — the official imprint 
from Richmond. I have looked over them, and I have an 
extract here from his message of Nov. 7, 1864, at the very 
time when these horrors were at their height and their worst. 
]Mr. Davis said : — 

" The solicitude of the Government for the relief of our captive fellow- 
citizens has known no abatement, but has on the contrary been still more 
deeply evoked by the additional sufferings to which they have been wantonly 
subjected by deprivation of adequate food, clothing, and fuel, which they 
were not even permitted to purchase from the prison sutler." 



160 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

And he adds that the — 

" Enemy altempted to excuse their harharous treatment by the unfounded allega- 
tion that it loas retaliatory fur like conduct on our ])art." 

In answer to this atrocious slander by the Confederate Presi- 
dent, now become liistoric, I am justified in declaring that there 
is not a Confederate soldier living who has any credit as a man 
in his community, and who was a prisoner in the hands of the 
Union forces, who will say that he ever was cruelly treated ; 
that he ever was deprived of just such rations as the Union 
soldiers had — the same food and the same clothing. 

Mr. Cook of Georgia. Thousands of them say it — thou- 
sands of them ; men of as high character as any in this House. 

Mr. Blaine. I take issue upon that. There is not one who 
can substantiate it — not one. As for measures of retaliation, 
although goaded by this terrific treatment of our friends im- 
prisoned by Mr. Davis, the Senate of the United States specifi- 
cally refused to j)!^ss a resolution of retaliation, as contrary to 
modern civilization and to the first precepts of Christianity. 
No retaliation was attemj^ted or justified. It was forbidden, 
and Mr. Davis knew it was forbidden as well as I knew it or 
any other man, because what took place in Washington or what 
took place at Richmond was known on either side of the line 
within a day or two thereafter. 

Mr. Speaker, this is not a proposition to punish Jefferson 
Davis. Nobody is attempting that. I thought the indictment 
of Mr. Davis at Richmond, under the administration of Presi- 
dent Johnson, was not justifiable, for he was indicted only for 
that of which he was guilty in common with all others who 
went into the Confederate revolt. But here and now I ex- 
press my firm conviction that there is not a government, not a 
civilized government on the face of the globe — I am very sure 
there is not a European government — that would not have 
arrested Mr. Davis at the close of the war, and when they had 
him in their power would not have tried him for maltreatment 
of the prisoners of war, and shot him within thirty days. 
France, Russia, England, Germany, Austria, any one of them 
would have done it. The poor victim Wirz deserved his death 
for brutal treatment and murder of many victims, but it was 



NUMBER WHO DIED AT ANDERSONVILLE. 161 

weak policy on the part of our government to allow Jefferson 
Davis to go at large and to hang Wirz. Wirz was nothing in 
tlie world but a mere subordinate, acting under orders, and 
there was no special reason for singling him out for death. I 
do not say he did not deserve it. He deserved no mercy, but, 
as I have often said, his execution seemed like passing over the 
president, superintendent, and board of directors in the case 
of a great railway accident and hanging the brakeman of the 
rear car. 

I repeat, there is no proposition here to punish Jefferson 
Davis. Nobody is seeking to do it. That time has gone by. 
The statute of limitations, the common feelings of humanity, 
supervene for his benefit. But what you ask us to do is to 
declare by a vote of two-thirds of both branches of Congress 
that we consider ]Mr. Davis worthy to fill the highest offices in 
the United States, if he can find a constituency to indorse him. 
He is already a voter ; he is at liberty to engage in any calling ; 
he can buy and he can sell ; he can go and he can come. He 
is as free as any man in the United States. It is now proposed 
in the pending bill for which the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
stands sponsor, that Mr. Davis, by a two-thirds vote of the 
Senate and a two-thirds vote of the House, shall be declared 
eligible and worthy to fill any office under the Governmeiit of the 
United States including the Chief Magistracy thereof. For one, 
upon full deliberation, 1 refuse my assent to that proposition. 

One word, Mr. Speaker, by way of explanation, which I 
omitted. It has been said in mitigation of JefTerson Davis's 
responsibility for the Andersonville horror, that the men who 
died there (I think the number was about twelve thousand) 
fell a prey to an epidemic, and died of a disease which could 
not be averted. The record shows this to be untrue. Out of 
35,000 men about 33 per cent died; while of the soldiers 
encamped near by to guard the prisoners, only one man in four 
hundred died; that is, within half a mile, only one in four 
hundred died, while inside the stockade one in three died. 

As to the general question of amnesty, Mr. Speaker, as I 
have already said, it is too late to debate it. Whether the 
general and generous remission of political disability by the 
Republicans has been in all respects wise, or whether it has been 



102 POLITICAL DLSCUSSIONS. 

unwise, 1 will not detain the House here and now to discuss. 
Even if I had a strong conviction upon that question, I do not 
know that it would be productive of any good to enunciate it 
at this time. But I must say, it is a singular spectacle that 
the Republicans, in possession of the entire Government, have 
deliberately called back into political power the leading men of 
the South, nearly every one of whom is their bitter and relent- 
less and malignant foe ; and to-day, from the Potomac to the Rio 
Grande, the very men who have received this amnesty are as 
busy as they were before the war in consolidating the old slave 
States into one compact political organization. We see the 
banner held out, blazoned again with the inscription that with 
the united South and a few votes from the North this country 
can be governed. I want the people to understand the char- 
acter of the movement; to appreciate its animus, to measure 
its mtent. But I do not think that offering anuiesty to the 
seven hundred and fifty men who are now without it will 
hasten or retard the course of events in the South. 

It is often said that "we shall lift Mr. Davis again into 
great consequence by refusmg him amnesty." That is not for 
me to consider. I only see before me, when his name is pre- 
sented, a man Avho, by a wave of his hand, by a nod of his head, 
could have put an end to the atrocious cruelties at Ander- 
sonville ! 

Some of us had kinsmen there, many of us had friends there, 
all of us had countrymen there. In the name of those kins- 
men, friends, and countrymen, I here protest, and shall with 
my vote protest, against calling back and crowning with the 
honors of full American citizenship the man who stands respon- 
sible for that orq'anized miu-der. 



REMONETIZATION OF SILVER. 163 



REMONETTZATION OF SILVER. 



[Speech of James G. Blaine of Maine, delivered in the United States Senate, 
Thursday, Feb. 7, 1878. 

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the 
bill (H. K. 'No. 1090) to authorize the free coinage of the standard silver dollar 
anil to restore its legal-tender character.] 

Mr. President, — The discussion on the qiiesti(_)n of remon- 
etizing silver has been prolonged and exhaustive. I may not 
expect to add much to its value, but I promise not to add much 
to its length. I sliall endeavor to consider facts rather than 
theories, to state conclusions rather than arguments. 

I believe gold and silver coin to be the money of the Consti- 
tution — indeed, the money of the American people anterior to 
the Constitution, money which the organic law of the Republic 
recognized as independent of its own existence. No power 
was conferred on Congress to declare that either metal should 
not be money. Congress has therefore, in my judgment, no 
more power to demonetize silver than to demonetize gold ; no 
more power to demonetize either than to demonetize both. In 
this statement I am but repeating the weighty dictum of the 
first of Constitutional lawyers. " I am certainly of ojiinion," 
said Mr. Webster, " that gold and silver, at rates fixed by Con- 
gress, constitute the legal standard of value in this country, and 
that neither Congress nor any State has autlioritij to establish 
any other standard or to displace this standard.'" Few persons 
can be found, I apprehend, who will maintain that Congress 
possesses the power to demonetize both gold and silver, or that 
Congress could be justified in prohibiting the coinage of both ; 
and yet in logic and legal construction it would be difficult to 
show where and why the power of Congress over silver is greater 
than over gold — greater over either than over both. If, there- 



164 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

fore, silver lias been demonetized, I am in favor of remonetizing 
it. It" its coinage has been prohibited, I am in favor of ordering 
it to be resumed. If it has been restricted, I am in favor of 
ordering it to be enlarged. 

What power, then, has Congress over gold and silver? It 
has the exclusive power to coin them ; the exclusive power to 
regulate their value, — very great, very wise, very necessary 
powers, for the discreet exercise of which a critical occasion has 
now arisen. However men may differ about causes and pro- 
cesses, all will admit that within a few years a great disturbance 
has taken place in the relative values of gold and silver, and 
that silver is worth less or gold is worth more in the money 
markets of the world in 1878 than in 1873, when the further 
coinage of silver dollars was prohibited in this country. To 
remonetize it now as though essential conditions had not 
eluniged, is willfully and blindly to deceive ourselves. If our 
demonetization were the only cause for the decline in the value 
of silver, then remonetization would be its proper and effectual 
cure. But other causes, l)eyond our control, have been far 
more potentially operative than the simple fact that Congress 
prohibited its farther coinage. As legislators we are bound 
to take cognizance of these causes. The demonetization of 
silver in the German Empire and the consequent partial, or 
well-nigh complete, suspension of coinage in the governments 
of the Latin Union, have been the leading causes for the rapid 
decline in the value of silver. I do not think the over-supply 
of silver has had, in comparison with these other causes, an 
appreciable inlluence in the decline of its value, because its 
over-supply with respect to gold in these later years has not 
been so great as was the over-supply of gold with respect to 
silver for many years after the mines of California and Aus- 
tralia were opened ; and the over-supply of gold from those 
rich sources did not affect the relative positions and uses of the 
two metals in any European country. 

I believe then, if Germany were to remonetize silver and the 
kingdoms and states of the Latin Union were to re-open their 
mints, silver would at once resume its former relation with gold. 
The European countries when driven to full remonetization, as 
I believe they will be in the end, must of necessity adopt their 



REMONETIZATION OF SILVER. 165 

old ratio of fifteen and a half of silver to one of gold, and we 
shall then be compelled to adopt the same instead of onr former 
ratio of sixteen to one. If we fail to do tliis we shall, as before, 
lose our silver, which like all things else seeks the highest 
market ; and if fifteen and a half pounds of silver will buy as 
much gold in Europe as sixteen pounds will buy in America, 
the silver, of course, will go to Europe. But our line of policy 
in a joint movement with other nations to remonetize is simple 
and direct. The difficult problem is what we shall do when 
we aim to re-establish silver without the co-operation of Eu- 
ropean powers, and really as an advance movement to coerce 
those powers into the same policy. Evidently the first dictate 
of prudence is to coin such a dollar as will not only do justice 
among our citizens at home, but will prove a protection — an 
absolute barricade — against the gold mono-metallists of Europe, 
who, whenever the opportunity offers, will quickly draw from 
us the one hundred and sixty millions of gold coin which we 
now hold. If we coin a silver dollar of full legal-tender, obvi- 
ously below the current value of the gold dollar, we are simply 
opening our doors and inviting Europe to take our gold. With 
our gold flowing out from us we shall be forced to the single 
silver standard and our relations with the leading commercial 
countries of the world will be not only embarrassed but 
crippled. 

The question before Congress then — sharply defined in the 
pending House bill — is, whether it is now safe and expedient 
to offer free coinage to the silver dollar of 41 2^ grains, with 
the mints of the Latin Union closed and Germany not permit- 
ting silver to be coined as money. At current rates of silver, 
the free coinage of a dollar containing 412i grains, worth in 
gold about ninety-two cents, gives an illegitimate profit to the 
owner of the bullion, enabling him to take ninety-two cents' 
worth of it to the mint and get it stamped as coin and force 
his neighbor to take it for a full dollar. This is an unfair 
advantao'e which the Government has no right to give to the 
owner of silver bullion, and which defrauds the man who is 
forced to take the dollar. It assuredly follows that if we give 
free coinage to this dollar of inferior value and put it in circu- 
lation, we do so at the expense of our better coinage in gold; 



166 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

;uid unless we expect the invariable experience of other nations 
to be in some mysterious way suspended for our peculiar bene- 
fit, we inevitably lose our gold coin. It will How out from us 
with the certainty and with the force of the tides. Gold has 
indeed remained with us in considerable amount during the 
circulation of the inferior currency of the legal tender; but 
that was because there were two great uses reserved by law for 
gold, — the collection of customs and the payment of interest on 
the public debt. But if the inferior silver coin is also to Iw 
used for these two reserved purposes, then gold has no tie to 
bind it to us. What gain, therefore, should we make for tlie 
circulating medium, if on opening the gate for silver to flow in, 
we open a still wider gate for gold to flow out? If I were to 
venture upon a dictum on the silver question, I should declare 
that until Europe remonetizes silver we cannot afford to coin a 
dollar as low as 412^ grains. After Europe remonetizes on the 
old standard, Ave cannot afford to coin a dollar above 400 
grains. If we coin too low a dollar before general remonetiza- 
tion our gold will leave us. If we coin too high a dollar after 
general remonetization our silver will leave us. It is only an 
equated value before and after general remonetization that will 
preserve both gold and silver to us. 

Consider further what injustice would be done to every hohh^r 
of a legal-tender or national-bank note. That large volume of 
paper money — in excess of seven hundred millions of dollars 
— is now worth between ninety-eight and ninety-nine cents on 
the dollar in gold coin. The holders of it, who are indeed our 
entire population from the poorest to the richest, have been 
promised from the hour of its issue that their paper money 
would one day be as good as gold. To pay silver for the green- 
back is a full compliance with this promise and this obligation, 
provided the silver is made as it always has been hitherto, as 
good as gold. To make our silver coin even three per cent less 
valuable than gold inflicts at once a loss of more than twenty 
millions of dollars on the holders of our paper money. To 
make a silver dollar worth but ninety-two cents precipitates 
on the same class a loss of nearly sixty millions of dollars. 
For whatever the value of the silver dollar is, the whole paper 
issue of the country will sink to its standard when its coinage 



REMONETIZATION OF SILVER. 167 

is authorized and its circulation becomes general in the chan- 
nels of trade. Some one in conversation with Commodore 
Vanderbilt during one of the many freight competitions of the 
trunk lines said, " It cannot be that the Canadian Railroad lias 
sufficient carrying capacity to compete with your great line ? " 
— " That is true," replied the Commodore, '' but they can fix a 
rate and force us down to it." Were Congress to pass a law 
to-day declaring that every legal-tender note and every national- 
bank note shall hereafter pass for only ninety-six or ninety- 
seven cents on the dollar, there is not a constituency in the 
United States that would re-elect a man who supported it, and 
in many districts the representative would be lucky if he es- 
caped merely with a defeat at the polls. 

Yet it is almost mathematically demonstrable that the same 
effect will follow from the coinage of an inferior silver dollar. 
Assurances from empirics and scientists in finance that remone- 
tization of the former dollar will at once and permanently 
advance its value to par with gold, are worth little in the 
face of opposing and controlling facts. The first effect of 
issuing any silver dollar that will pay customs dues and inter- 
est on the public debt, will undoubtedly be to raise it to a prac- 
tical equality with gold ; but that condition will last only until 
the amount needful for customs shall fill the channels of its use ; 
and the overflow going into general circulation will rapidly set- 
tle to its normal and actual value, and then the discount will 
come on the volume of the paper currency, which will sink, 
pari passu, with the silver dollar in which it is made redeem- 
able. That remonetization will have a considerable effect in 
advancing the value of the silver dollar is very probable, but 
not enough to overcome the difference now existing, — a differ- 
ence resulting from causes independent of our control in the 
United States. 

The responsibility of re-establishing silver in its ancient and 
honorable place as money in Europe and America, devolves 
really upon the Congress of the -United States. If we act here 
with wisdom and firmness, we shall not only successfully re- 
monetize silver, and bring it into general use as money in our 
own country, but the influence of our example will be potential 
among European nations, with the possible exception of Eug- 



168 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

land. Indeed, our annual indebtment to Europe is so great 
that, if we have the right to pay it in silver, we necessarily 
coerce those nations, by the strongest of all forces, self-interest, 
to aid us in upholding the value of silver as money. But if we 
attempt the remonetization on a basis which is obviously below 
the fair standard of value as it now exists, we incur all the evil 
consequences of failure at home, and the certainty of successful 
opposition abroad. We are, and shall be, the greatest produ- 
cers of silver in the world, and we have a larger stake in its 
complete nionetization than any otlier country. The difference 
to the United States, between the general acceptance and the 
general destruction of silver as money in the commercial world, 
will possibly within the next half-century equal the entire 
bonded debt of the Nation. But, to gain this advantage, we 
must make it actual money, the accepted equal of gold in the 
markets of the world. Remonetization here, followed by gen- 
eral remonetization in Europe, will secure to the United States 
the most stable basis for its currency that we have ever enjoyed, 
and will effectually aid in solving all the problems by which 
our fhiancial situation is surrounded. 

On the much-vexed and long-mooted question of a bi-metallic 
or mono-metallic standard, my own views are sufficiently indi- 
cated in tjie remarks I have made. I believe the strueele now 
going on in this countr}^ and in otlier countries, for a single 
gold standard, would, if successful, produce disaster in the end 
throughout the commercial world. The destruction of silver as 
money, and the establishment of gold as the sole unit of value, 
must have a ruinous effect on all forms of property except those 
investments which yield a fixed return in money. These would 
be enormously enhanced in value, and would gain a dispropor- 
tionate, and therefore unfair, advantage over every other species 
of property. If, as the most reliable statistics affirm, there are 
nearly seven thousand millions of coin or bullion in the world, 
not very unequally divided between gold and silver, it is imjios- 
sible to strike silver out of exfttence as money without results 
which will prove distressing to millions, and utterly disastrous 
to tens of thousands. Alexander Hamilton, in his able and 
invaluable report in 1791 on the establishment of a mint, de- 
clared that " to annul the use of either gold or silver as money 



REMONETIZATION OF SILVER. 169 

is to abridge the quantity of circulating medium, and is liable 
to all the objections which arise from a comparison of the bene- 
fits of a full circulation with the evils of a scanty circulation." 
, I take no risk in saying that the benefits of a full circulation, 
and the evils of a scanty circulation, are both immeasurably 
greater to-day than they were when Mr. Hamilton uttered these 
weighty words, always provided that the circulation is one of 
actual money, and not of depreciated " promises to pay." 

In the report 'from which I have already quoted, Mr. Hamil- 
ton argues at length in favor of a double standard, and all 
the subsequent experience of ninety years has brought out no 
clearer statement of the case, or developed a more complete 
comi)rehension of this sulitle and difticult subject. " On the 
whole," says Mr. Hamilton, "it seems most advisable not to 
attach the unit exclusively to either of the metals, because tliis 
cannot be done effectually without destroying the office and 
character of one of them as money, and reducing it to the situ- 
ation of mere merchandise." Mr. Hamilton wisely concludes 
that this reduction of either of the metals to mere merchandise 
(I again quote his exact words) " would probably be a greater 
evil than occasional variations in the unit from the fluctuations 
in the relative value of the metals, especially if care be taken to 
regulate the proportion between them, with an eye to their ave- 
rage commercial value." 1 do not think that this country, hold- 
ing so vast a proportion of the world's supply of silver in its 
mountains and its mines, can afford to reduce the metal to the 
" situation of mere merchandise." If silver ceases to be used 
as money in Europe and America, the mines of the Pacific 
slope will be closed and dead. Mining enterprises of the gigan- 
tic scale existing in this country cannot be carried on to provide 
backs for mirrors, and to manufacture cream-pitchers and sugar- 
bowls. A source of incalculable wealth to this entire country is 
destroyed the moment silver is permanently disused as money. 
It is for us to check that tendenc}'', and bring the continent of 
Europe back to the full recognition of the value of the metal 
as a medium of exchange. 

The question of beginning anew the coinage of silver dollars 
has aroused mucli discussion as to its effect on the public credit. 
The senator from Ohio [Mr. Matthews] placed this phase of 



170 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

the subject in the very forefront of the debate — insisting, pre- 
maturely and illogically, I think, on a sort of judicial construc- 
tion in advance, by concurrent resolution, of a certain law in 
case that law should happen to be passed by Congress. ]VIy 
own view on this question can be stated very briefly. I believe 
the public creditor can afford to be paid in any silver dollar that 
the United States can afford to coin and circulate. We have 
forty thousand millions of property in this country, and a wise 
seli-iuterest will not permit us to overturn its relations by seek- 
ino- for an inferior dollar wherewith to settle the honest demands 
of any creditor. The question might be different from a merely 
selfish point of view if, on paying the dollar to the public cred- 
itor, it would disappear after performing that function. But the 
trouble is that the inferior dollar you pay the public creditor 
remains in circulation, to the exclusion of the better dollar. 
That which j^ou pay at home will stay here ; that which you 
send abroad will come back. The interest of the public cred- 
itor is indissolubly bound up with the interest of the whole 
people. Whatever affects him affects us all ; and the evil 
that we might iiiilict upon him by paying an inferior dollar 
would recoil upon us with a vengeance as manifold as the aggre- 
gate wealth of the Republic transcends the comparatively small 
limits of our bonded debt. Remember that our aggregate 
wealth is always increasing, and our bonded debt steadily grow- 
ing less! If paid in a good silver dollar, the bondholder has 
nothing to complain of. If paid in an inferior silver dollar, he 
has the same grievance that will be uttered still more plaintively 
by the holder of the legal-tender note and of the national-bank 
bill, by the pensioner, by the day laborer, and by the count- 
less host of the poor, whom we have with us always, and on 
whom the most distressing eifect of inferior money will be 
ultimately precipitated. 

But I must say, Mr. President, that the specific demand for 
the payment of our bonds in gold coin, and in nothing else, 
comes with an ill grace from certain quarters. European criti- 
cism is leveled against us, and hard names are hurled at us 
across the ocean, for simply daring to state that the letter of 
our law declares the bonds to be payable in standard coin 
of July 14, 1870 ; explicitly declared so, and declared so in the 



REMONETIZATION OF SILVER. 171 

interest of the public creditor, and the declaration inserted in 
the very body of the eight hundred millions of bonds that have 
been issued since that date. Beyond all doubt, the silver 
dollar was included in the standard coins of that public act. 
Payment at that time would have been as acceptable and as 
undisputed in silver as in gold dollars, for both were equally 
valuable in the European as well as in the American market. 
Seven-eighths of all our bonds owned out of the country are 
held in Germany and in Holland. Germany has demonetized 
silver, and Holland has been forced thereby to suspend its coin- 
age, since the subjects of both powers purchased our securities. 
The German Empire, the very year after we made our specific 
declaration for paying our bonds in coin, passed a law destroy- 
ing, so far as lay in its power, the value of silver as money. 
I do not say that it was specially aimed at this country, but it 
was passed regardless of its effect upon us, and was followed, 
according to public and undenied statement, by a large invest- 
ment on the part of the German Government in our bunds, with 
a view, it was understood, of holding them as a coin reserve for 
drawing gold from us to aid in establishing their new gold 
standard at home. Thus, by one move the German Govern- 
ment destroyed, so far as lay in its power, the then existing 
value of silver as money, enhanced consequently the value of 
gold, and then got into position to draw gold from us at the 
moment of their need, which would also be the moment of our 
own sorest distress. I do not say that the German Govern- 
ment, in these successive steps, did a single thing which it had 
not a perfect right to do, but I do say that the subjects of that 
Empire have no reason to complain of our Government for the 
initial step which has impaired the value of one of our standard 
coins. The German Government, by joining with us in the rc- 
monetization of silver, can place that standard coin in its old 
position, and make it as easy for this Government to pay and 
as profitable for their subjects to receive the one metal as the 
other. 

When we pledged the public creditor in 1870 that our obli- 
gations should be paid in the standard coin of that date, silver 
bullion was worth in the London market a fraction over sixty 
pence per ounce ; its average for the past eight months has 



172 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

been about fifty-four pence ; the price reckoned in gold in both 
cases. But the hirge difference is due in part to the rise of gold 
as well as to the fall of silver. Allowing for both causes and 
dividing the difference, it will be found, in the judgment of 
many of the wisest men in this country, perfectly safe to issue 
a dollar of 425 grains standard silver ; as one that, anticipating 
the full and legitimate influence of remonetization, will ecjuate 
itself with 'the gold dollar, and effectually guard against the 
drain of our gold during the time necessary for international 
conference in regard to the general re-establishment of sil- 
ver as money. When that general re-establishment shall be 
effected with a coinage of fewer grains, the dollar which I am 
now advocating will not cause loss or embarrassment to any 
one. The miner of the ore, the owner of the bullion, the 
holder of the coin, and the Government that issues it, will all 
in turn be benefited. It will yield a profit on recoinage and 
will be advantageously employed in our commercial relations 
with foreign countries. Meanwhile it will insure to our labor- 
ers at home a full dollar's pay for a dollar's worth of work. 

I think we owe this to the American laborer. Ever since we 
demonetized the old dollar we have been running our mints 
at full speed, coining a new silver dollar for the use of the 
Chinese cooly and the Indian pariah — a dollar containing 420 
grains of standard silver, with its superiority over our ancient 
dollar ostentatiously engraved on its reverse side. To these 
" outside barbarians " we send this superior dollar, bearing all 
our national emblems, our patriotic devices, our pious inscrip- 
tions, our goddess of liberty, our defiant eagle, our federal 
unity, our trust in God. This dollar contains 7^ grains more 
silver than the famous " dollar of the fathers," proposed to be 
recoined by the i)ending bill, and more than four times as many 
of these new dollars have already been coined as ever were 
coined of all other silver dollars in the United States. In the 
exceptional and abnormal condition of the silver market now 
existing throughout the world we have felt compelled to in- 
crease the weiglit of the dollar with which we carry on trade 
with the heathen nations of Asia. Shall we do less for th(; 
American laboi'er at home? Nay, shall we not do a little 
better and a little more for those of our own blood and our 



KEMONETIZATION OF SILVER. 173 

own fireside ? If you remonetize the dollar of the fathers your 
mints will be at once put to work on two different dollars, — 
different in weight, different in value, different in prestige, dif- 
ferent in their reputation and currency throughout the com- 
mercial world. It will read strangely in history that the 
weightier and more valuable of these dollars is made for an 
ignorant class of heathen laborers in China and India, and that 
the lighter and less valuable is made for the intelligent and 
educated laboring-man who is a citizen of the United States. 
Charity, the adage says, begins at home. Charity, the inde- 
pendent American laborer scorns to ask, but he has the right 
to demand that justice should begin at home. In his name 
and in the name of common sense and common honesty, I ask 
that the American Congress will not force upon the American 
laborer an inferior dollar which the naked and famishing labor- 
ers of India and China refuse to accept. 

The bill which I now offer as a substitute for the House bill 
contains three very simple provisions : — 

1. That the dollar shall contain four hundred and twenty-five 
grains of standard silver, shall have unlimited coinage, and be 
an unlimited legal tender. 

2. That all the profits of coinage shall go to the Government, 
and not to the operator in silver bullion. 

3. That silver dollars or silver bullion, assayed and mint- 
stamped, may be deposited with the Assistant Treasurer at New- 
York, for which coin certificates may be issued, the same in 
denomination as United States notes, not below ten dollars, 
and that these shall be redeemable on demand in coin or bullion. 
We shall thus secure a paper circulation based on an actual 
deposit of precious metal, giving us notes as valuable as those 
of the Bank of England and doing away at once with tlie 
dreaded inconvenience of silver on acconnt of bulk and 
weight. 

I do not fail, Mr. President, to recognize that the committals 
and avowals of senators on this question preclude the hope of 
my substitute being adopted. I do not indeed fail to recognize 
that on this question I am not in line with either extreme, — 
with those who believe in the single gold standard or with 
those who by premature and unwise action, as I must regard it, 



174 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

would force us to the single silver standard. Either will be 
found, in my judgment, a great misfortune to our country. 
We need both gold and silver, and we can have both only by 
making each the equal of the other. It would not be difficult 
to show that, in the nations where both have been fully recog- 
nized and most widely diffused, the steadiest and most continu- 
ous prosperity has been enjoyed, — that true form of prosperity 
which reaches all classes, but which begins with the day-laborer 
whose toil lays the foundation of the whole superstructure of 
wealth. The exclusively gold nation like England may show 
the most massive fortunes in the ruling classes, but it shows 
also the most helpless and hopeless poverty in the humbler 
walks of life. The gold and silver nation like France can 
exhibit no such individual fortunes as abound in a gold nation 
like England, but it has a peasantry whose silver savings can 
pay a war indemnity that would have beggared the gold 
bankers of London, and to which the peasantry of England 
could not have contributed a pound sterling in gold or even 
a shilling in silver. 

The effect of paying the labor of this country in silver coin 
of full value, as compared with irredeemable paper, — or as 
compared, even, with silver of inferior value, — will make itself 
felt in a single generation to the extent of tens of millions — 
perhaps hundreds of millions — in the aggregate savings which 
represent consolidated capital. It is the instinct of man from 
the savage to the scholar — developed in childhood and remain- 
ing with age — to value the metals which in all lands are 
counted " precious." Excessive paj^er money leads to extrava- 
gance, to waste, to want, as we painfully witness to-day. 
With abounding proof of its demoralizing and destructive 
effect, we hear it proclaimed in the Halls of Congress, that 
" the people demand cheap money." I deny it. I declare such 
a phrase to be a total misapprehension — a total misinterpreta- 
tion of the popular wish. The people do not demand cheap 
money. They demand an abundance of good money, which is 
an entirely different thing. They do not want a single gold 
standard that will exclude silver and benefit those already rich. 
They do not want an inferior silver standard that will drive out 
gold and not help those already poor. They want both metals. 



REMOXETIZATION OF SILVER. 1T5 

in full value, in equal honor, in whatever abundance the boun- 
tiful earth will yield them to the searching eye of science and 
to the hard hand of labor. 

The two metals have existed side by side in harmonious, 
honorable companionship as money, ever since intelligent trade 
was known among men. It is well-nigh forty centuries since 
" Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named 
in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of 
silver, current money with the merchant." Since that time 
nations have risen and fallen, races have disappeared, dialects 
and languages have been forgotten, arts have been lost, treas- 
ures have perished, continents have been discovered, islands 
have been sunk in the sea, and through all these ages and 
through all these changes, silver and gold have reigned supreme 
as the representatives of value — as the media of exchange. 
The dethronement of each has been attempted in turn, and 
sometimes the dethronement of both ; but always in vain ! And 
we are here to-day, deliberating anew over the problem which 
comes down to us from Abraham's time — the weight of the 
silver that shall be "current money with the merchant." 



176 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



THE HALIFAX AWARD. 



[On the 26th of February, 1878, Mr. Blaine submitted the following resolu- 
tion for the consideration of the Senate : — 

Resolved, That the President of the United States be respectfully requested to 
conimunicate to the Senate at the earliest practicable day, if not in his judgment 
incompatible with the public interest, copies of all correspondence between our 
Government and the Government of Her Britannic Majesty in regard to the selec- 
tion of M. iNIaurice Delfosse, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary 
from Belgium, as the third commissioner under the twenty-third article of the 
treaty of Washington on the question of the fisheries. 

Objection was made and the resolution went over. On the 11th of March 
Mr. Blaine called up the resolution, and made the following speech: — ] 

Mr. President, — The resolution of inquiry, wliich I offered 
a fortnigltt ago, was met witli objection and was laid over. 1 
call it up now to explain my reasons for desiring its adoption. 
For some time past there have been rumors of an unpleasant 
character touching the mode in which M. Delfosse, the Bel- 
gian minister accredited to this country, was urged by the 
British Government as the third commissioner under the treaty 
of Washington on the question of the Fisheries. These rumors 
come in a form that enforces attention, and while I do not 
pretend to vouch for their entire accuracy, I think they are 
sufficiently grave to call for authentication or denial. 

It appears by these reports that during the conference of the 
Joint High Commission in April, 1871, Lord Ripon, speaking 
for the English Government, said in relation to the several 
proposed arbitrations which were under discussion, that it would 
not be a proper thing for England to offer Belgium or Portugal 
as arbitrators ; and he especially spoke of Belgium as being 
incapacitated for tlie function by reason of her peculiar rela- 
tions with England. This declaration was promptly assented 
to by the American commissioners. With the understanding 



THE HALIFAX AWARD. 177 

thus volunteered by Lord Ripon, the Halifax commission of 
three arbitrators on the fisheries was agreed to — our Government 
to name one, the British Government to name one, and the 
two Governments conjointly to name the third. It was stipu- 
lated that if the two Governments could not agree on the third 
commissioner within three months, the Austrian ambassador 
at London should name him. As soon as the fishery clause 
of the treaty went into effect in July, 1873, the Secretary of 
State, Mr. Fish, formally invited the British minister. Sir 
Edward Thornton, to confer with him in regard to the appoint- 
ment of the third commissioner. He found Sir Edward without 
instructions from his Government, and after delaying for some 
days Mr. Fish took the initiative and submitted a number of 
names for his consideration. Among these, selected from a 
large field, were Mariscal, minister from Mexico ; Offenberg, 
minister from Russia ; Borges, from Brazil ; Polo, from Spain ; 
the Count de Noailles, from France ; Westenberg, from Hol- 
land, and others. Mr. Fish did not include M. Delfosse among 
these, as he thought that his name had been fairly excluded by 
the understanding of the Joint High Commission. 

Sir Edward Thornton made no response for several weeks and 
then answered Mr. Fish, declining to accept any of the names 
submitted by him and proposing in turn the single name of M. 
Delfosse. It was understood, I believe, that Sir Edward Avas 
acting under the direct instructions of Lord Granville, British 
Secretary of Foreign affairs. Mr. Fish peremptorily declined to 
accept M. Delfosse and quoted Lord Ripon's remark in regard 
to Belgium, and again urged Sir Edward to accept one of the 
names proposed by him or else to propose some names Inmself. 
In answer to this Sir Edward stated that Lord Dufferin, the 
Governor-General of the Dominion of Canada, speaking for the 
Canadians, objected to taking as the third commissioner any one 
accredited to our Government. Immediately after this declara- 
tion Sir Edward appeared at the State Department with fresh 
instructions from Lord Granville to insist on M. Delfosse, 
though at that very moment M. Delfosse was accredited to our 
Government. The only alternative presented by Sir Edward 
was that his Government would accept some "Dutch gentle- 
man " that might be chosen at the Hague by the American and 



178 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

British ministers. Tliis mode of selection was at once rejected 
by Mr. Fish as not being within the terms of the treaty. The 
three months within which the two Governments were to act 
conjointly having been thus exhausted, apparently by the design 
of the British Government, the matter was by the treaty re- 
manded to the Austrian ambassador at London. A delay of 
some years then ensued in consequence of the negotiations for 
a reciprocity treaty which, if secured, would have precluded the 
necessity of arbitrating the fishery question. The correspond- 
ence was not renewed until 1876. 

The result of the whole was that in February, 1877, the 
Austrian ambassador at London nominated M. Delfosse as the 
third commissioner. It is now reported on the authority of an 
interview recently published in the New - York Herald that Mr. 
Fish finally assented to the appointment of ]\L Delfosse by the 
Austrian ambassador. This may or may not be true, but it is not 
material to the issue ; for the matter had lapsed absolutely into 
the hands of the ambassador, and as he was resident in London, 
in easy communication with the British ministry, they had 
means of influencing the decision that were not within our 
power. IMr. Fish may well have thought that as the appoint- 
ment of M. Delfosse was inevitable it was prudent and expedient 
to submit to it gracefully and in such a way as not to incur 
the personal ill-will of the third commissioner. I can well 
see how a wise secretary, like Mr. Fish, might in the end 
have been thus influenced after having exhausted every effort, 
as he so ably and fearlessly did, to keep M. Delfosse off the 
commission. 

I do not intend in any remarks I am making to cast reflec- 
tions on ]\L Delfosse, who is known as an honorable representa- 
tive of his Government. I only mean to imply and to assert 
that, if Lord Ripon is to be credited, M. Delfosse was not in a 
position to be an impartial arbitrator ; and that in my judgment 
Great Britain never should have proposed him. Mr. Fish was 
therefore justified in resisting his appointment as long as resist- 
ance promised to be effectual. Nor do I mean to impute to Sir 
Edward Thornton any proceednig that was not strictly honor- 
able. The higldy esteemed representative of the British Gov- 
ernment at this Capital, in all he did was simply following the 



THE HALIFAX AWARD. 179 

instructions of Lord Granville. But I do mean to say, if I am 
correctly informed, that the correspondence for which ray reso- 
lution calls will disclose a designed and persistent effort on the 
part of the British Government to secure an advantage in the 
selection of the third commissioner on the question of the fish- 
eries. It is but just to remark that the Dominion of Canada 
had no more right to interpose in the matter than had the States 
of Massachusetts and Maine ; and that the governors of those 
States had the same right to speak for their people in regard to 
selecting a third commissioner as had Lord Dufferin to speak 
for the people of the Dominion. The negotiation was between 
two great nations, and subordinate States and provinces had no 
right to dictate, or even to suggest, unless called uj^on by the 
two principals. 

It may be somewhat premature to speak of the award made 
by the Halifax commission, but as it is already discussed in the 
press of both countries, a brief reference to it may not be out 
of place. The extraordinary nature of that award can only be 
appreciated when the surrounding facts are understood. In the 
original discussion of the fishery question by the Joint High 
Commission in 1871, the American commissioners could be in- 
duced to offer only $1,000,000 for all the fishing privileges sub- 
sequently embodied in the treaty. The British commissioners 
declined this offer, and would enter into no negotiation that did 
not include the admission of the products of the Canadian fish- 
eries into the American market free of duty. This conces- 
sion, highly advantageous to Canada and highly injurious to 
our fisheries, was finally inserted in the treaty. It was further 
agreed to decide by arbitration what amount of additional 
compensation should be paid by us for the right to use the 
inshore fisheries of Nova Scotia for twelve years. The Halifax 
commission took the subject into consideration, and two com- 
missioners (both in effect selected by Great Britain) determined 
that we should pay her five and a half millions of dollars in 
gold coin, or at the rate of nearly half a million dollars per 
annum. The duties on the products of Canadian fisheries im- 
ported into this country (all remitted by the treaty) would be 
almost another half million dollars per annum ; 'so that under 
this award we should be actually paying nearly a million of 



180 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

dollars per annum in gold coin for the privilege of inshore fish- 
ing on the coast of Nova Scotia, where the total catch by 
American fishermen, beyond what we had the right to take 
without this treaty, would not amount to much over $300,000 
per annum. In other words, we are paying to Great Britain a 
million of dollars per annum for the privilege of catching less 
than four hundred thousand dollars' worth of fish. Such is a 
mere outline of the facts of the case, and the injustice of the 
award is so palpable that it is difficult to treat it with the respect 
due to all subjects involving international relations. 

The question as to the binding force of the award is naturally 
and necessarily one of the gravest interest, not only on account 
of the large amount involved but on account of the very 
peculiar circumstances under which the decision against us was 
reached. The award was signed only by Sir Alexander Gait, 
the British commissioner, and by M. Delfosse. The American 
commissioner, Mr. Kellogg, refused to sign it, and affirmed his 
dissent in writing ; declaring it to be his deliberate opinion that 
''the advantages accruing to Great Britain under the treaty 
were greater than those conferred on the United States ; " and 
he further declared that he deemed it his duty to state that " it 
is questionable whether it is competent for the board to make 
an award under the treaty except with the unanimous consent 
of all the arbitrators." Mr. Dwiglit Foster, the agent of our 
Government, stated that he " had no instructions as to wliat he 
should do under the circumstances, but he could not keep silent, 
and give ground for the inference that our Government would 
consider the award a valid one." I mention these facts to show 
that objections to the validity of the award were not the result 
of afterthought, but were incorporated as part of the proceed- 
ings before the arbitrators. 

The ground on which iVIr. Kellogg questioned the competency 
of two of the arbitrators to make an award is that found in all 
the legal authorities on arbitration. Tlie articles in the treaty 
of Washington creating the Halifax Board of Arbitration gave 
no authority to a majority of the Board to make an award, nor 
was the third commissioner empowered to act as umpire. Both 
in the tribunal at Geneva and in the Claims Commission at 
Washington, it was expressly stipulated that a majority of the 



THE HALIFAX AWARD. 181 

arbitrators should decide. In the Halifax commission no such 
stipulation was made, and the inference therefore is strong, if 
not irresistible, that their award should be made according to 
the general law of arbitration. What that law is, upon English 
authority, may be briefly stated. 

Redman on " Arbitration and Awards," considered one of the 
highest authorities in England, sa3's : — 

" On a reference to several arbitrators with no provision that less than all 
shall make an award, each must act ; and all must act together ; and every 
stage of the proceedings must be in the presence of all ; and the award nmst 
be signed by all at the same time." 

Francis Russell, another English authority of eminence, 

says : — 

" On a reference to several arbitrators together, when there is no clause 
providing for an award made by less than all being valid, each of them must 
act personally in performance of the duties of his office as if he were sole 
arbitrator ; for as the office is joint, if one refuse or omit to act, the others 
can make no valid award." 

Stewart Kyd, an earlier but not less authoritative writer, 
enforces the same doctrine. After alluding to the Roman law 
and to its permission for the majority of arbitrators to decide, 
Mr. Kyd makes the following statement : — 

" In this respect the law of England is somewhat different ; for unless it 
be expressly provided in the submission that a less number than all the 
arbitrators named may make the award, the concurrence of all is necessary." 

If these eminent English authors are to be accepted, it is 
quite apparent that the Halifax award has no binding effect in 
law. As to the equity of the case, I have already given the 
undeniable facts that govern it. 

I am not now discussing, much less presuming to define, the 
action which our Government should ultimately take in regard 
to the award. If we should follow what I believe would be the 
inevitable course of Great Britain under similar circumstances 
we should utterly refuse to pay a single penny, and ground our 
refusal both on the law and the equity of the case. The treaty 
as it stands is a mockery of justice, and will work the certain 
destruction of a great American interest. It is in fact noth- 
ing else than asking us to pay a million dollars per annum to 



182 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Great Britain for destroying the entire fishing interest of 
America and still further crippling and weakening us as a com- 
mercial power. For the utter abrogation of the treaty I should 
be willing to pay the annual indemnity for the years we have 
u«ed the inshore fisheries, during which years the Canadians 
have had free access to the markets of forty-five millions of 
])eople; or I should be willing to pay double the award to be 
rid of the treaty. We might by this course anticipate by a 
period of seven years a return to that policy which alone can 
insure the prosperity or even save the life of a great and impor- 
tant trade, indissolubly associated with our commercial develop- 
ment and absolutely essential to our success and prestige as 
a naval power. Paying thus even an unfair price for the 
inshore fisheries as long as we shall have used them, we remove 
all possible ground for imputation, even by the ignorant and 
the hostile, upon the honor of our Government and the good 
faith and fair dealing of our people. 

When we were poor and weak as a nation, we so highly 
esteemed the value of the fisheries that we encouraged their 
development by rewards and bounties. These were abandoned 
some years ago, but still we preserved to our fishermen a pref- 
erence in our own markets. Even that is given away by the 
provisions of this treaty. By the Halifax award, if we accept 
it, and continue the treaty, we pay to Great Britain one mil- 
lion dollars per annum for destroying a school of commerce, 
which, properly nurtured, will be her great rival in the future. 
Against such a policy T enter my protest, if I stand alone. I 
believe that the products of American industry, on land and 
sea, should have the first and best chance in the American 
markets. 1 believe the American fisherman should be preferred 
by us to the Canadian fisherman. If we cannot pay him a 
bounty to encourage and sustain him, let us at least not pay 
a bounty to Great Britain to destroy him. 

Mr. Hamlin. Mr. President, I interpose no objection to the 
passage of this resolution, while on the other hand I think it 
wise and well that we shall have all the facts in relation to this 
matter before us. I agree entirely with my colleague, with the 
senator from Massachusetts, and with the gentleman whose 
letter has been read at the table by the Clerk, that we get no 



THE HALIFAX AWARD. 183 

compensation for that award in any equivalent granted, by the 
inshore fisheries along the coast of Nova Scotia. I have no 
hesitation in declaring that an equivalent in the receipt of the 
fjsh caught in the provinces in our market is far beyond any 
tiling which we receive in return under that treaty. There can 
be no doubt about it. And yet we are living to-day under a 
treaty negotiated here in this city ; and while it is the law of 
the land and a contract existing between the two high contract- 
ing parties, the honor of this Government demands that we 
maintain all the obligations that are imposed upon us. If it be 
true that we were overreached or that in the selection of the 
arbitrator an improper person was taken we must remember 
that he was finally taken by the assent of this Government; 
and when we come to the consideration of the subject it will 
be one which involves the honor of our Government and one 
which I need not undertake to say will demand of us that we 
meet promptly and fully what shall be required. 

Mr. Blaine. I quite agree with my colleague upon that, 
and I think our merit will be all the greater if we pay an award 
of five and a half millions when we have proved to the world 
that we did not get any thing for it. Paying one's debt for 
full value received is considered a proper and upright course 
for upright men; but paying a large sum for which we get 
nothing in return ought to be accounted to us for a good 
deal more of righteousness. 

[The correspondence between the two Governments was sent to the Senate 
on the 26th of March, and on moving that it be printed Mr. Blaine spoke as 
follows : — ] 

Mr. President, — I move that the correspondence between 
the American and British Governments in regard to the appoint- 
ment of M. Delfosse on the Halifax commission be taken from 
the table and referred to the Committee on Foreign Aftairs. I 
beg at the same time to call the attention of the Senate to the 
fact that the correspondence more than justifies all I said in 
regard to the very extraordinary efforts of Lord Granville to 
force M. Delfosse upon our Government. I would particularly 
direct attention to the letter of Sir Edward Thornton, of Aug. 
19, 1873, and to Mr. Fish's reply on the 21st of the same month. 



184 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

When the resolution calling for this correspondence was be- 
fore the Senate, I agreed with my honorable colleague, the 
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, that the award 
would be paid, not because it was just or was founded upon 
any fact or evidence submitted to the Halifax connnission, but 
simply because it was an award which for honor's sake we 
might pay though we got nothing for the large sum required. 
If the payment of five and a half millions were the end of 
the matter I should be willing to vote it in silence and bury the 
whole matter out of sight. But the truth is that this award 
is only the beginning of trouble. The period for which it pays 
will be ended in five years and then our privilege for inshore 
fishing must be negotiated afresh. It was well known at Hali- 
fax during the session of the Commission that the Canadian 
authorities were striving not simply for the large sum in hand 
but for the fixing of a rate by Avhich to assess the price of 
the inshore fisheries in future. It is our duty to show that 
the rate fixed by the Halifax Commission has no foundation 
whatever in truth or in fact and that no evidence was before 
the commission to justify the award. I hold iu my hand some 
statistics of very great interest bearing on the question, from 
which it appears that the total value of the catch in the inshore 
fisheries by American fishermen during the four years the 
treaty has been in operation was only $435,170, on which the 
profit was probably $100,000. This covers the entire catch for 
which we obtained the right under the treaty. During the 
same four years the duties on Canadian fish and oil remitted 
by our Government amounted to a million and a half of dollars 
in gold, and now under this treaty we are compelled to pay 
half a million per annum in addition or two millions of dollars 
in gold coin for the four years. In other words, by remission 
of duties and the payment of cash from the Treasury our Gov- 
ernment is called upon to pay three and a half millions of 
dollars in gold coin for the privilege of permitting our fisher- 
men to make a profit of $100,000 on the inshore fisheries of 
Nova Scotia. 

Considerable comment has been made in the country on the 
point suggested by me that the Washington treaty required 
the unanimous verdict of the Halifax commissioners before a 



THE HALIFAX AWARD. 185 

legally valid award could be made. I quoted some eminent 
English authorities in support of this position. Since then a 
friend has shown me a copy of the London Times of July G, 
1877, containing an elaborate editorial article in regard to tlu? 
fishery commission then al)0ut to assemble in Halifax. In 
discussing the powers of tlie commission the Times said : — 

" On every point that comes before the fishery commission for decision 
the unanimous consent of all its members is, by the terms of the treaty, 
necessary before an authoritative verdict can be given." 

The Times then points out the difference between the Geneva 
tribunal and the Halifax commission, showing that a majority 
could decide at Geneva but affirming that the United States 
would have a perfect right to demand unanimity in the verdict 
at Halifax. 

It is also well known that the Halifax commission was dis- 
cussed by the Canadian ministry in 1875, after the negotiations 
for a Reciprocity treaty had failed. On that occasion Mr. 
Blake, the Minister of justice, remarked that the "amount of 
compensation we shall receive must be an amount unanimously 
agreed upon by the commissioners." I mention these facts to 
show that I spoke with full authority when I suggested that 
the verdict rendered at Halifax was not legally binding under 
the terms of the treaty. Its payment must be justified on 
other grounds, and I have already intimated more than once 
that considerations entirely outside of the legality or the jus- 
tice of the award might constrain us to respect it. But it 
should never be paid without such protest as will forever pre- 
vent its being quoted as a precedent or accepted as a standard 
to measure the value of the inshore fisheries in future negoti- 
ations. 



186 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



TRADE WITH SOUTH AMERICA. 



[On the 5th of June, 1S7S, Mi-. Blaine addressed the Senate on the question 
of granting the aid of the Government in estabhshing a hue of American mail- 
steamers to Brazil.] 

Mr. President, — This discussion is taking a much wider 
range than the simple granting of a subsidy to Mr. John Roach, 
as the senator from Michigan [Mr. Christiancy] seems to sup- 
pose. The last phase of the question propounded by the senator 
from Kentucky in an amendment, which is now being printed T 
believe, declares that hereafter ships of foreign construction 
shall be imported free into the United States and be entitled to 
American registry. From a variety of indications which I have 
observed in Congress, at both ends of the Capitol, for the last 
three or four years, it is soon, T think, to become a practical 
question, to be submitted to the test of legislative judgment 
whether on the whole we shall maintain our navigation laws, 
or whether, after having stood by them for eighty years, we 
shall conclude now to surrender them and become tributary to 
Great Britain. In plain truth that is what the amendment 
of the senator from Kentucky means. It means that with all 
our wealth, with all our advancement in skill and capital and 
prestige and power, here in the last quarter of the nineteenth 
century we shall confess ourselves incompetent to do what the 
founders of the Government considered themselves able to 
accomplish in the days of our National infancy. 

It is an instructive lesson that the first Congress which 
assembled under the Federal Constitution, when the popu- 
lation of this country was short of four millions, when our 
coast line began at the eastern end of the District of Maine 
and was limited by the southern end of Georgia, when we did 
not touch the Gulf of Mexico and did not even dream of the 



TRADE WITH SOUTH AMERICA. 187 

Pacific Ocean, wlien we could not manufacture the tools neces- 
sary to build a ship, when all things in the shape of mechanical 
contrivance and adaptation were in their veriest infancy in this 
country, that the wise founders of our Government decreed in 
tlie navigation laws, which have stood from that day to tliis, 
that we would lay the foundations of a great naval and com- 
mercial power. The men of that day knew that we never 
could have a naval or commercial power unless we could secure 
the skill and the art of the ship-builder at home. Our fathers 
ordained to this end two great things : in the first place, that 
no ship but one built and owned by Americans should ever 
engage in the coastwise trade of the United States ; that this 
privilege should be for our own citizens absolutely and exclu- 
sively and for all time ; and, in the second place, that as re- 
spected the foreign trade, no ship should float the American 
flag or have an American register that Avas not built and owned 
in the United States. 

Gentlemen think this policy was a failure. The senator from 
Kentucky [Mr. Beck] has talked heretofore, and his amend- 
ment now speaks more plainly than his words, to the effect that 
this policy has been a failure. Let us see for a moment what 
ground there is for his conclusion. Down to the time of the 
rebellion, measuring seventy years from the foundation of the 
Government, we had been steadily gaining in the commercial 
contCvSt with Great Britain, until in the year 1857 we stood 
abreast of her in ocean tonnage. More than that. In the 
year 1857 our foreign commerce amounted to a little over 
$700,000,000, counting both ways, imports and exports, and 
American vessels carried i>500,000,000 of it, and vessels of 
all other nations carried but a shade over $200,000,000 of it. 
Twenty years afterward, taking the statistics of 1877, what 
is the lamentable picture that is shown us? Our foreign com- 
merce has increased to between eleven and twelve hundred 
millions annually, and the American vessels carry less than 
$300,000,000 of it, while vessels of foreign nationalities carry 
over $800,000,000 of it. 

I maintain, sir, that if our Government had not met with the 
incalculable obstruction that was thrown against us by the war, 
and had been willing to uphold her shipping as stiffly as Great 



188 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Britain has upheld hers on all the lines of commerce, we should 
have outrun her. We had outrun her in sailing-vessels. We 
were ahead of her or at least equal to her in 1857. If I remem- 
ber the figures aright, the tonnage stood about 5,700,000 tons for 
each country, and I grieve to say that it is over eight millions for 
Great Britain and only three millions for America to-day. We 
may stand here and talk about the wrongfulness of subsidies and 
the impolicy of granting them until doomsday ; and Great Britain 
will applaud every speech of that kind made in the American 
Congress, and will quietly subsidize her steamers and take pos- 
session of the carrying-trade of the world. Great Britain to- 
day makes annually out of the commerce of the United States 
a larger sum than the interest on our public debt. She receives 
more in the way of net profits on the carrying-trade which 
America gives her, than the interest on the vast national debt 
with which we are burdened to-day. I submit this statement 
as a statistical fact capable of being illustrated and jjroved. 

Let me now recount a few facts that in this connection are 
valuable ; namely, that in the last six years, including 1877, 
Brazil exported five hundred and forty million dollars' worth 
of merchandise. How much did we take of it ? We took two 
hundred and fifty millions of it. We took almost half. Brazil 
imported nearly the same amount that she exjDorted — about 
ninety million a year out and in. How much did we send to 
Brazil in those six years? In the entire six years we sent 
forty-two million dollars' worth. They do not reall}' know in 
Brazil what we have to sell and what we are able to manufac- 
ture and offer them. 

The senator from New York labored to show the other day 
that we had failed under what was called the Garrison subsidy. 
The Garrison Company ran a line of steamers to Rio, which in 
the first place was not a first-class one, not a line that was 
in any degree a competing line with the British and French. 
Nobody wanted to embark on them when they were lying side 
by side with the British steamers in the port of Rio Janeiro. 
This is a fact which the Senate ought not to forget : that the 
line was started at the close of the war, when the prices of all 
our manufactured articles were very high, and we could not 
export fabrics of any kind. 



TRADE WITH SOUTH AMERICA. 189 

Mr. Eaton. If my friend will permit me, I would remind 
him that half the butter and cheese Brazil imports (every pound 
of which we can furnish from Ohio alone), nearly all the boots 
and shoes, which can be furnished by Massachusetts, and 
nearly all the agricultural implements went from Great Britain. 

Mr. Blaine. I thank my friend from Connecticut for call- 
ing my attention to the fact. I was coming to some details of 
that kind. I was pointing out, though, that the ten years 
of the Garrison subsidy were years of remarkably high prices 
in the United States, so that we were in no condition to be an 
exporting nation. The fall in prices in this country within 
the last five years, however, has been most extraordinary, quite 
as extraordinary as the previous rise, and on a very large num- 
ber of articles we are able not only to compete fairly, but to 
undersell other nations. But the pressing question is, how can 
you bring seller and buyer together? To apply the homely 
phrase, the first* thing you must do to induce a man to trade 
with you is, get him in your store. This applies to a nation as 
well as to a country merchant. You must do that before you 
can sell him any thing. He is not going to buy when he is on 
the other side of a ten-acre lot or in the next township. 

The merchants on the River La Plata and in Rio Janeiro 
and all over the kingdom of Brazil desire a speedy and comfort- 
able way of reaching the United States. To-day all the desir- 
able lines of travel that run from the city of Rio Janeiro run 
to Europe, and the steamers that run there are just as good 
as the steamers that run from New York to Europe ; and, of 
course, the merchants and travelers will go in that direction. 
This little bit of a Merchants' line between New York and 
Rio Janeiro runs vessels in which nobody would wish to go to 
sea. It is not a comfortable vessel, aside from any peril that 
may be involved in going to sea in a nine-hundred-ton ship. 
It is a very different thing to go to sea in a three or four thou- 
sand ton ship. It is the difference between riding on land in a 
freight-car and in a Pullman palace-car. When they present 
that as the competing line, it is simply to shut us out of Brazil 
and keep Brazilians from coming to us. The very first thing 
to connect us in any commercial relations whatever with Brazil 
is to enable Brazilians to come here, and to come here with 



190 rOLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

comfort, to make a journey both of pleasure and of business. 
They go by the thousands and the tens of thousands to Europe, 
and they will continue to go there just as long as there is no 
opportunity to come this way with equal speed and comfort. 

Mr. President, there is not a more enlightened sovereign in 
the world than the eminent man who governs Brazil to-day. He 
is an imperial democrat or a democratic emperor, whichever 
you choose to call him. He is thoroughly devoted to the inter- 
ests of his people. He illustrated in his last journey over the 
world the fabled tour of Peter the Great in the seventeenth 
century, going into the ship-yards and dock-yards and factories 
to find out how every thing was done. He came here ; he went 
over this country, I venture to say, in a much more thorough 
manner than any gentleman on this floor has ever done. I 
venture to say that Dom Pedro can tell more — I do not know 
about the individual localities which we all know about — but 
taking the country as a whole, I venture to say that the impe- 
rial head of that government can tell more about the United 
States from personal observation than any senator on this floor. 
He went back profoundly impressed with the idea that Brazil 
had been made altogether too much a tail to the kite of the 
European monopolists, and that Brazilians had never had an op- 
portunity to enter into the markets of the United States. He 
found that he was selling nearly half of all that he had to sell 
from his empire to this country, and almost literally buying 
nothing from us ; and he said the very first thought that struck 
him was, " There is no way of coming to your country ; we 
cannot get to you. We may come up to Carthagena and ship 
there, and come over to Havana and ship there, and thus get 
to New York." That will take five or six weeks. There is 
occasionally a stray steamer that runs, but it cannot be de- 
pended on. The first thing therefore to be done in order to 
establish trade between this country and Brazil, as that wise 
Emperor said, is to establish a good line of communication 
between the two. 

The Emperor while he was in the United States met John 
Roach. He conversed on this sul ject with Mr. Roach just as 
he stood in his own ship-yard in the active discharge of his 
daily business. He measured his intelligence and his energy. 



TRADE WITH SOUTH AMERICA. 191 

After the Emperor had returned to his dominions Mr. Roach 
sent an agent to Rio Janeiro. He found the Emperor still 
zealous and eager for the line of steamers. His Majesty's Gov- 
ernment contracted with Mr. Roach to put on a line of first- 
class steamers between Rio and New York that people might 
go back and forth, that mail-matter might go back and forth 
freely, that there should be luxurious accommodations if they 
chose to pay for them, and ample accommodations for all those 
who chose to avail themselves of them ; and the Emperor of 
Brazil did that in the undoubted belief that America would 
respond with at least equal liberality. He made the tender. 
He said, '' We need to come closer together ; we cannot get to 
each other now ; let us build up a line of first-class steamships, 
and I will pay half." That is the plain truth of it : "I will 
pay half if you will pay the other half. Let us try it and see 
what will come of it." Forthwith, as one of the results of it, 
a meeting was held in the city of New York, in the expectation 
that this line would be established, and merchants and manu- 
facturers have taken the preliminary steps to establish a maga- 
zine in Rio in which every variety of American fabric shall 
be exhibited — our textiles, our metals, our products of all 
kinds — that a great American bazaar shall be opened there in 
which every thing we have to sell shall be exhibited witli the 
price attached, and the advantages of shipments shall be made 
known to all buyers. 

This may be an unwise waste of money. I do not myself 
think so. It may be a very wise thing for us to fold our hands 
and say to Great Britain, " Take the seas ; they are yours. 
To be sure we have seventeen thousand miles of coast running 
from Behring's Straits down to the Gulf of California ; we take 
in all the Gulf of Mexico, all the North Atlantic. We have 
timber, lumber, hemp, and iron, and every possible material that 
can make ships, but we are not equal to it. You must come 
forward and do our carrying-trade." That is what England is 
contending for to-day. She does not intend that any European 
nation shall ever become a great naval and commercial power. 

There is no rival left to her in the commercial world, and if 
she can buy us out, or bully us out of a tariff that shall protect 
American industries, and bluff us out of enterprises that shall 



192 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

stimulate lines of American steamships, she will have done all 
she desires to do for her factories and for her commerce. 

The honorable senator from Maryland said that every one of 
these attempts to build up commerce by means of subsidies had 
been utter and ignominious failures, and he cited especially 
the Pacific mail, out of which there grew much scandal. The 
senator from California [Mr. Sargent], in the very debate of 
last year, in wliieh my honorable friend from Michigan was 
willing to give half a million for old and inferior ships, while 
he is not willing now to give one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars for a line of new and superior steamships, said, and I 
quote this for the benefit of the senator from Maryland, — 

" We have now to a very great extent, by means of this policy pursued by 
the Government, control of the commerce of the Pacific Ocean. The Atlantic 
is an English or European lake, and nothing more. We scarcely venture 
out upon it with our own American lines. The case, however, is reversed in 
regard to the Pacific, and there the enterprise of our people, aided in this 
manner by our Government, has been able to seize upon the prominent lines 
of communication, and commerce is extended there on every hand. We 
have nearly as much control of the Pacific as England or any European 
power has of the Atlantic. The statistics show that there has been an 
increase of duties paid into the Treasury of the United States on account 
of the commerce built up by the Chinese mail-line greater by a million and 
a half of dollars than the amount of subsidy which has been paid out by the 
Government to aid in maintaining that line. The Government has made 
money by it." 

Even with all the mishaps and scandals which attached to 
that unfortunate line, so great has been its success, that it 
has given to us the lead in the commerce of the Pacific and 
has yielded back a larger revenue, aside from the indirect 
benefits, than tlie sum paid out of the Treasury of the United 
States to maintain the line. 

Mr. Whyte. May I ask the senator from Maine — 

Mr. Blaine. Ask the senator from California. 

Mr. Whyte. No, I will ask the senator from Maine. He is 
addressing me, and in reply I will ask him the question whether 
the building of the Pacific Railroad has not increased the duties 
rather than the Pacific mail-line ? 

Mr. Blaine. The duties were not decreased on the Atlantic 
side. That very same question was asked the senator from 
California at the time by the senator from Vermont [Mr. 
Morrill], and the senator from California answered that there 



TRADE WITH SOUTH AMERICA. 193 

was no corresponding decrease to be shown here. The senator 
means, I su23pose, that it merely transferred the point of collec- 
tion ; but there was no corresponding decrease anywhere, and 
more than that, as the senator from California intimated — I 
am really borrowing his argument — the effect was largely to 
decrease — decrease indeed by a million dollars — the cost of 
t^a to the consumers in this country. 

I do not come from a steamship State. I come from a State 
jthat builds wooden ships and has sold them and will continue 
'to do it, for the day of wooden ships has not gone by ; they will 
remain for long voyages and for freights whose value is not de- 
pendent upon a particular date of delivery. They will remain 
I suppose as long as the tides rise and the winds blow. In that 
field the State I represent is without any rival in this country 
to-day. But is this country willing calmly to resign the sceptre 
of the ocean to Great Britain? Are we not ready to make one 
struggle, not for the North Atlantic — that is so entirely pos- 
sessed by others that we are crowded out of it — but a struggle 
to hold, at all events, some sort of tenure of the trade in South 
America and on the Pacific Ocean? 

I shall vote for this bill. I did not vote for the bill of last 
winter. I did not think it was a wise bill. I differed from my 
friend from Michigan, and I especially differed from my honored 
colleague from whom I rarely part and when I do always with 
the impression that I may be in the wrong ; but for this bill, 
which offers more and asks less than any other subsidy that has 
ever been proposed in this country, I shall most cheerfully give 
my vote. 

One word more. I always think, in homely phrase, that it is 
wise and safe to do the thing which 3-0 ur rival does not want 
you to do. I am sure that you could get a unanimous vote in 
the British House of Commons against the grant of this aid by 
the American Congress. I am sure that a policy for Avhich the 
British House of Commons would vote unanimously, it is not 
for the interest of the American Government to uphold. 



194 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



THE PROGRESS OF THE NORTH-WEST. 



[Address of James G. Blaine at the Minneapolis Fair, Minnesota, Tuesday, 
Sept, 3, 1878.] 

Mr. President, — An assemblage of the citizens of Minne- 
sota, coming together to rejoice over abundant harvests, and to 
view the bountiful products of their State, is well calculated 
to inspire recollections which are of interest beyond the limits 
of the audience that now honor me with their attention. 

Near the borders of your State, on the banks of the great 
river now flowing in our sight, there resides a man in the full 
vigor of an honorable old age, long my acquaintance and my 
friend, whose career calls vividly to mind the wonderful prog- 
ress of the North- West. In the last two years of General 
Jackson's Presidency, George W. Jones was the delegate in 
Cons'ress from that vast area now forming the States of Miclii- 
gan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, together with that part 
of the Territory of Dakota north of the Missouri River and 
east of the White Earth. In the last preceding Federal census 
the total civilized population of the entire territory of Michigan 
was less than thirty-two thousand — adventurous men standing 
on the outposts of civilization, and accepting and conquering 
the hardships of the frontier. At that time — forty-three years 
ago — there were but two newspapers of any kind whatever 
published in the whole country of which I have spoken, and 
not one of these west of Lake Michigan. To-day the same 
country has eight senators, twenty-nine representatives, and 
one delegate in Congress ; has railroads aggregating eleven 
thousand miles in length and five hundred millions in cost ; has 
seventy-seven daily newspapers, and more than eleven hundred 
weekly or monthly publications ; has great cities larger than 



THE PROGRESS OF THE NORTH-WEST. 195 

Philadelphia or New York when the United States had taken 
its second census and chosen its third President ; has a popu- 
lation as great, excluding the slaves of that day, as had the 
whole country when we met Great Britain for the second time 
in war ; produces a larger amount of breadstuffs than the entire 
Union produced when General Jones entered Congress ; con- 
tains more wealth than was owned in the eighteen States that 
divided their electoral votes between James Madison and 
DeWitt Clinton for the Presidency in 1812. Such facts as 
these may well cause us to give thanks to God and to a vir- 
tuous ancestry for the blessings of liberty and good government 
which have made all this progress possible. 

Geographically the State of Minnesota is a land of singular 
and surpassing interest. Lying about equi-distant from the 
great oceans on the east, on the west, on the north, and on the 
south, her situation, as compared with her sister States, is alto- 
gether peculiar, and in one respect is without parallel on any 
continent. Her surface forms the central water-shed of North 
America ; and not far from where we stand streams have their 
modest sources which finally lose themselves in one direction 
through Hudson's Bay in the Arctic waters, in another through 
the chain of the great lakes in the Atlantic Ocean, and a third 
through the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico. To the 
westward, nature has raised an insurmountable barrier to the 
water-course, but the invention of man has found a more rapid 
transit ; and through tlie power of steam and over the road of 
iron there is already projected and partly achieved the great 
commercial highway to the Pacific foretold by La Salle when, 
standing on the banks of the St. Lawrence, by tlie rapids whose 
name perpetuates his prophecy, pointing to the untrodden West, 
whither he had already turned his face, he pronounced to his 
doubting companions the inspiring word, " La Chine ! " 

Viewed historically, that which now constitutes the State of 
Minnesota has undergone as many and as rapid changes in its 
sovereignty as aii}^ disputed territory in Europe which has 
been fought over by armed hosts set in motion by the ambition 
of kings or the jealousy of rival nationalities. This fair land 
was under the dominion of France during the reigns of Louis 
XIV. and his great-grandson. Iberville, who led the French 



196 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

colony to Louisiana, was its first Governor, and Bienville, who 
founded New Orleans, was its second. It was pawned by the 
Regent Orleans in his scheme with John Law for creating value 
out of moonshine, and was made with other territory the basis 
of that fraudulent scheme projected by the Mississippi Company 
— ill which real estate in Minnesota, still in the undisputed 
possession of the savage and the wild beast, became the shadowy 
foundation in Paris, one hundred and sixty years ago, of a far 
greater monetary credit than it could command to-day in the 
same financial market, with all its improvements and its great 
nitrinsic value. It was in part under the dominion of George 
III. of England, until he was compelled to yield his right to 
your soil by the treaty of 1783, and to withdraw the last Red 
Coat by the treaty of 1795. For thirty-seven years, all on the 
west side of your dividing river was attached to the crown of 
Spain during the reigns of the Third and Fourth Charles, and 
given up by the latter in 1800 to France, when for a period of 
three brief years Napoleon Bonaparte was the sovereign ruler 
of the larger half of Minnesota. The First Consul always 
did business on a basis of hard cash, and he transferred the 
French possessions in America to the United States for fifteen 
millions of dollars, eighty years after John Law and his spec- 
ulating partner, the Duke of Orleans, had made the same 
possessions the basis for an issue of pajier money amounting 
to nearly three thousand millions of francs. Some reflections 
are naturally suggested by these facts which would perhaps 
not be entirely pertinent to an address before an Agricultural 
Society. I may be pardoned, however, for the inference that 
the " resources of a great country " do not afford a sound and 
secure basis for an enlarged paper currency. 

But these changes of European sovereignty over the soil of 
Minnesota are not more striking or more strange than the rapid 
transformation of its government since it came under the 
sovereignty of the United States. It is almost forgotten his- 
tory, that the eastern half of your State was claimed during 
the Revolutionary struggle as part of Virginia, by no less a 
Governor than Thomas Jefferson ; that as part of the North- 
west Territory the gallant but unfortunate Arthur St. Clair 
was its chief Executive ; that as part of Indiana, William 



THE PROGRESS OF THE NORTH-WEST. 197 

Henry Harrison, frontiersman, soldier, statesman, was made its 
Governor at the age of twenty-seven years; that as part of 
Illinois the large-framed and large-hearted Ninian Edwards 
ruled over it, a^Dpointed thereto by President Madison at the 
personal request of "a young senator named Clay" as he is sig- 
nificantly styled in a certain record ; that as part of Michigan 
Territory, General Cass was its efficient and careful Executive ; 
that as part of Wisconsin, the chivalrous and courageous Henry 
Dodge was its popular Governor — and also its delegate in 
Congress from one-half its domain, while his worthy and still 
living son, as delegate at the same time from Iowa, represented 
the other half, — a striking coincidence, rendered still more 
remarkable by the meeting again of father and son as Senators 
from the States which they represented in the House when 
Territories. 

Nor of the section of your State west of the Mississippi does 
it read less strangely, that when sold to the National Govern- 
ment by Napoleon Bonaparte it became part of the organized 
Territory of Louisiana; was soon changed to Missouri, and 
had for long years as its Governor the brave, adventurous Wil- 
liam Clarke, who in company with Meriwether Lewis, under the 
direction of President Jefferson, made that extraordinary jour- 
ney from ocean to ocean — the first white men who crossed the 
continent on soil belonging to the United States, leaving their 
names forever associated with a great achievement, familiar to 
all who have read the hardships and conquests of the " Lewis 
and Clarke " expedition. Minnesota afterwards formed part 
of the magnificent and rapidly growing Territory of Iowa, 
which soon took on the stature of a full-grown, vigorous Com- 
monwealth. 

Iowa and Wisconsin having been admitted as States, their 
joint remainders naturally formed one government, and in 
1849 the Territory of Minnesota was organized. Thus Min- 
nesota, east and west of the Mississippi fell under the same 
government for the first time since the United States had 
acquired Louisiana from France, with the exception of a brief 
period under the old territorial organization of Michigan, and 
an equally brief one under that of Wisconsin. That seems but 
yesterday; yet the sowing of the next crop will mark full 



198 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

rounded thirty years since the organic Act was passed by Con- 
gress, and President Zachary Taylor appointed Alexander Ram- 
sey first Governor of the new Territory. His P^xcellency is 
among yon to-day, after enjoying the highest honors of your 
Territory and your State, looking as fresh and as vigorous as 
when in the administrations of J(jhn Tyler and James K. Polk 
he represented a Pennsylvania district in the Congress of the 
United States. He might pass still as a young man, if his lu- 
minous record, made in two States and in both branches of 
Congress, did not enable us to measure the threescore years 
that crown his honored head. 

To trace the history and development of Minnesota from its 
organization in 1849 would far transcend the proprieties or 
even the possibilities of this occasion. But whoever will enter 
into the details of the progress here made will find one of the 
most remarkable advances of civilization, and in a period so 
brief that it does not comprehend the life of one generation. 
In 1849 your Territory contained but forty-six hundred inhabit- 
ants ; to-day your State has seven hundred thousand. In 1849 
you raised fourteen hundred bushels of wheat; last year you 
raised thirty-three million bushels. These figures are but an 
index to your increase in all forms of material wealth. The 
pages of your census tables seem like a romance, the statistics 
of your progress dazzle the reader with their proportions and 
almost challenge his credulity at every column. 

I am addressing an agricultural community. During all 
the depression of trade and commerce and manufactures in 
these past five years, you have steadily advanced in comfort 
and independence. While thousands elsewhere have lacked 
employment, and many, I fear, have lacked bread, no able- 
bodied man in Minnesota has been without remunerative 
labor and no one has gone to bed hungry. Your pursuits and 
their results form the basis of the ideal Republic — happily 
realized within your own borders. The tendency of all your 
industry is toward the accumulation of individual competency, 
and does not favor the upbuilding of colossal fortunes. You 
are dealing daily with the essential things of life, and are not 
warped in your judgment or deflected from your course by 
speculative and illusory schemes of gain. You are land-owners. 



THE PROGRESS OF THE NORTH-WEST. 199 

free-holders, proud titles that come to us with centuries of civ- 
ilization and strength — titles that every niun in this country 
should make it his object to acquire and to honor. Self-o-ov- 
ernment among the owners of the soil in America is an in- 
stinct, and where that ownership is widely distributed good 
government is the rule. Whatever disturbances therefore may 
threaten the peace and order of society, whatever wild theories, 
transplanted from other climes, may seek foot-hold here, tlie 
Republic of the United States rests securely on that basis of 
agriculture where the farmers of the Revolution and the framers 
of the Constitution placed it. The man who possesses broad 
acres which he has earned by the sweat of his own face, is not 
apt to fall in with the doctrine of the Communist, that no one 
has a right to ownership in the soil. The man who has the 
product of his labor in wheat and in corn, in pork and in beef, 
in hides and in wool — commanding gold and silver as they 
always have done and always will do in the markets of the 
world — is not to be led astray with theories of fiat paper and 
absolute money, but instinctively consigns such wild vagaries 
to the appropriate domain of fiat folly and absolute nonsense. 

The farmers of the Republic will control its destiny. Agri- 
culture, commerce and manufactures are the three pursuits 
that enrich a nation — but the greatest of these is agriculture 
— for without its products the spindle cannot turn and the 
ship will not sail. Agriculture furnishes the conservative ele- 
ment in society and in the end is the guiding, restraining, con- 
trolling force in government. Against storms of popular fury ; 
against frenzied madness that seeks collision with established 
order; against theories of administration that have drenched 
other lands in blood ; against the spirit of anarchy that would 
sweep away the landmarks and safeguards of Christian society 
, and Republican government, the farmers of the United States 
will stand as the shield and the bulwark — themse'lves the will- 
ing subjects of law and therefore its safest and strongest 
administrators. 

Gradually the Government of the Republic is passing under 
the control of the farmers of the Mississippi valley. Indeed it 
is practically there to-day. The swelling and on-rushing tide 
of population is towards the broad plains and the rich acres 



200 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

that lie between the two mountain ranges of the continent. 
The soil is so fertile, the land so inviting, the area so broad, 
that no man may dare calculate the possibilities of this great 
region either as respects production or population. Your own 
State, peopled no more densely than New York, would have a 
population of nine millions ; peopled as densely as Massachu- 
setts, it would have a population of sixteen millions. With 
the transfer of political control from the old States to the new, 
there is also transferred a vast weight of responsibility. It is 
yours to-day ; it will be yours still more to-morrow. Take it ; 
use it wisely and well for the advancement of the whole — for 
the honor of all. The patriotic traditions of the " old thirteen " 
that fought the battles of the Revolution, formed the Union 
of the States, and planted Liberty in the organic Law, will be 
your safest guide, your highest inspiration. Many of you 
to-day mingle with your love for Minnesota, your earlier affec- 
tion for the old home and the old State far to the East, where 
an honored ancestry lie buried, and where the tenderest memo- 
ries cluster around the familiar scenes of days long past. It 
is this kinship of blood, these ties of memory, that make us 
indeed one people — uniting the East and the West, the North 
and the South, in the indissoluble bonds of a common, and I 
trust, always beneficent Government. 



SOUTHERN ABUSE OF ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. 201 



SOUTHERN ABUSE OF ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. 



[On the 2d of December, 1878, Mr. Blaine submitted the following resolution 
to the Senate : — 

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instnicted to inquire and 
report to the Senate whether at the recent elections the Constitutional rights of 
American citizens were violated in any of the States of the Union; whether the 
right of suffrage of citizens of the United States, or of any class of such citizens, 
was denied or abridged by the action of the election officers of any State in refus- 
ing to receive their votes, in failing to count them, or in receiving and counting 
fraudulent ballots in pursuance of a conspiracy to make the lawful votes of such 
citizens of none effect; and whether such citizens were prevented from exercis- 
ing the elective franchise, or forced to use it against their wishes, by violence or 
threats, or hostile demonstrations of armed men or other organizations, or by any 
other unlawful means or practices. 

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be further instructed to inquire 
and report whether it is within the competency of Congress to provide by addi- 
tional legislation for the more perfect security of the right of suffrage to citizens 
of the United States in all the States of the Union. 

Resolved, That in prosecuting these inquiries the Judiciary Committee shall 
have the right to send for persons and papers. 

On Wednesday, Dec. 11, Mr. Blaine addressed the Senate as follows: — ] 

Mr. President, — The pending resolutions were offered by 
me with a twofold purpose in view : — 

First, to place on record, in a definite and authentic form, 
the frauds and outrages by which certain recent elections for 
representatives in Congress were carried by the Democratic 
party in the Southern States. 

Second, to find if there be any method by which a repetition 
of these crimes against a free ballot may be prevented. 

The newspaper is the channel through which the people of 
the United States are informed of current events, and the 
accounts given in the press represent the elections in some of 
the Southern States to have been accompanied by violence, 
in not a few cases reaching the destruction of life ; to have 
been controlled by threats that awed and intimidated a large 



202 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

class of voters ; to have ))eeii manipulated by fraud of the most 
shameless and shameful description. Indeed in South Carolina 
there seems to have been no election at all in any proper senseu 
of the term. There was a series of skirmishes over the State, 
in w hich the polling-places were regarded as forts to be cap- 
tured by one part}^ and held against the other ; and where this 
could not be done with convenience, frauds in the count, and 
tissue-ballot devices were resorted to in order effectually to 
destroy the voice of the majority. These in brief are the 
accounts given in the non-partisan press, of the disgraceful 
outrages that attended the recent elections ; and so far as I 
have seen, these statements are without serious contradiction. 
It is but just and fair to all parties, however, that an impartial 
investigation of the facts shall be made by a committee of the 
Senate, proceeding under the authority of law and rei^resenting 
the power of the Nation. Hence my resolution. 

But Ave do not need investigation to establish certain facts 
already of official record. We know that one hundred and six 
representatives in Congress were recently chosen in the States 
formerly slave-holding, and that the Democrats elected one 
hundred and one or possibly one hundred and two and the 
Republicans four or possibly five. We know that thirty-five 
of these representatives were assigned to the Southern States 
by reason of the colored population, and that the entire politi- 
cal power thus founded on the numbers of the colored people 
has been seized and appropriated to the aggrandizement of its 
own strength by the Democratic party of the South. 

The issue thus raised before the country, Mr. President, is 
not one of mere sentiment for the rights of the negro — though 
far distant be the day when the rights of any American citizen, 
however black or however poor, shall form the mere dust of the 
balance in any controversy. Nor is the issue one that involves 
the waving of the "bloody shirt," to quote the elegant vernacu- 
lar of Democratic vituperation ; nor still further is the issue as 
now presented only a question of the equality of the black 
voter of the South with the white voter of the South. The 
issue, Mr. President, has taken a far wider range, one indeed 
of portentous magnitude ; viz., whether the white voter of the 
North shall be equal to the white voter of the South in shaping 



SOUTHERN ABUSE OF ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. 203 

the policy and fixing the destiny of tliis country ; or whether, 
to state it still more baldly, the white man who fought in the 
ranks of the Union Army shall have as weighty and inlluential 
a vote in the Government of the Republic as the white man 
who fought in the ranks of the Rebel Army. The one fought 
to uphold, the other to destroy, the Union of the States, and 
to-day he who fought to destroy is a far more important 
factor in the Government of the Nation than he who fought to 
uphold. 

Let me illustrate my meanijig by comparing groups of States 
of the same representative strength North and South. The 
States of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana send seven- 
teen representatives to Congress. Their aggregate popula- 
tion is composed of one million and thirty-five thousand whites 
and one million two hundred and twenty-four thousand col- 
(jred; the colored being nearly two hundred thousand in ex- 
cess of the whites. Of the seventeen representatives, it is 
evident that nine were apportioned to these States by reason 
of their colored population, and only eight by reason of their 
white population ; and yet in the choice of the entire seven- 
teen representatives the colored voters liad no more voice 
or power than their remote kindred on the shores of Sene- 
gambia or on the coast of Guinea. The one million and 
thirty-five thousand white people had the sole and absolute 
choice of the entire seventeen representatives. In contrast, 
two States in the North, Iowa and Wisconsin, with seventeen 
representatives have a white population of two million two 
hundred and forty-seven thousand, considerably more than 
double the entire white population of the three Southern 
States I have named. In Iowa and Wisconsin, therefore, it 
takes one hundred and thirty -two thousand white population 
to send a representative to Congress, but in South Carolina, 
Mississippi, and Louisiana every sixty thousand white people 
send a representative. In other words, sixty thousand white 
people in those Southern States have precisely the same politi- 
cal power in the government of the country that one hun- 
dred and thirty-two thousand white people have in Iowa and 
Wisconsin. 

Take another gr®up of seventeen representatives from the 



204 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

South and from the Nortli. Georgia and Ahibama have a white 
population of eleven hundred and fifty-eight thousand and a 
colored population of ten hundred and twenty thousand. They 
send seventeen representatives to Congress, of whom nine 
were apportioned on account of tlie white jjopulation and eight 
on account of the colored population. But the colored voters 
are not able to choose a single representative, the white Demo- 
crats choosing the whole seventeen. The four Northern States, 
Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and California, have seventeen 
representatives, based on a white population of two and a 
quarter millions, or almost double the white population of 
Georgia and Alabama, so that in these relative groups of States 
we find the white man in tlie South exercising b}- his vote 
double the political power of the white man in the North. 

Let us carry the comparison to a more comprehensive gener- 
alization. The eleven States that formed tlie Confederate gov- 
ernment had by the last census a population of nine and a half 
millions, of which in round numbers five and a half millions 
were white and four millions colored. On this aggregate popu- 
lation seventy-three representatives in Congress were appor- 
tioned to those States, forty-two or three of which were by 
reason of the white population, and thirty or thirty-one by 
reason of the colored population. At the recent election the 
white Democracy of the South seized seventy of the seventy- 
three districts, and thus secured a Democratic majority in the 
next House of Representatives. Thus it appears that through- 
out the States which formed the late Confederate Government, 
sixty-five thousand whites — the very peojDle that rebelled 
against the Union — are enabled to elect a representative in 
Congress, while in the loyal States it requires one hundred and 
thirty-two thousand of the white people that fought for the 
Union to elect a representative. In levying every tax, therefore, 
in making every apjDropriation of money, in fixing every line 
of public policy, in decreeing Avhat shall be the fate and for- 
tune of the Republic, the Confederate soldier South is enabled 
to cast a vote that is twice as influential and twice as powerful 
as the vote of the Union soldier North. 

But the white men of the South did not acquire and do not 
hold this superior power by reason of law or justice, but in 



SOUTHERN ABUSE OF ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. 205 

disregard and defiance of both. The Fourteenth Amendment 
to the Constitution was expected to be and was designed to be 
a preventive and corrective of all such possible abuses. The 
reading of the clause applicable to the case is instructive and 
suggestive. Hear it : — 

" Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according 
to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each 
State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any 
election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the 
United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial 
otticers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to 
any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, 
and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for par- 
ticipation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis ot representation therein 
shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such n}ale citizens 
shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in 
such State." 

The patent, undeniable intent of this provision was that if 
any class of voters should be denied or in any way abridged in 
their right of suffrage, then the class so denied or abridged 
sliould not be counted in the basis of representation ; or, in 
other words, that no State or States should gain a large in- 
crease of representation in Congress by reason of counting any 
class of population not permitted to take part in electing such 
representatives. But the construction given to this provision 
is that before any forfeiture of representation can be enforced 
the denial or abridgment of suffrage must be the result of a 
law specifically enacted by the State. Under this construction 
every negro voter may have his suffrage absolutely denied or 
fatally abridged by the violence, actual or threatened, of irre- 
sponsible mobs, or by frauds and deceptions of State officers 
from the governor down to the last election clerk, and then, 
unless some State law can be shown that authorizes the denial 
or abridgment, the State escapes all penalty or peril of reduced 
representation. This construction may be upheld by the 
courts, ruling on the letter of the law, " which killeth," but 
the spirit of justice cries aloud against the evasive and atro- 
cious conclusion that deals out oppression to the innocent and 
shields the guilty from the legitimate consequences of willful 
transgression. 

The colored citizen is thus most unhappily situated; his 



206 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

right of suffrage is but a hollow mockery ; it holds to his ear 
the word of promise but breaks it always to his hope, and he 
ends only in being made the unwilling instrument of increasing 
the political strength of that party from which he suffered 
ever-tiglitening fetters when he was a slave and contemptuous 
refusal of civil rights since he was made free. He resembles 
indeed those unhappy captives in the East who, deprived of 
their birthright, are compelled to yield their strength to the 
aggrandizement of the monarch from whose tyrannies they have 
most to fear, and to fight against the power from wliich alone 
deliverance might be expected. The franchise intended for the 
shield and defense of the negro has been turned against him and 
against his friends and has vastly increased the power of those 
from whom he has nothing to hope and every thing to dread. 

The political strength thus unjustly seized by Southern Demo- 
crats by reason of the negro population is equal to thirty-five 
representatives in Congress. It is massed almost solidly Hind 
offsets the great State of New York ; or Pennsylvania and 
New Jersey together ; or the whole of New England ; or Ohio 
and Indiana united ; or the combined strength of Illinois, 
Minnesota, Kansas, California, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, 
and Oregon. The seizure of this powei^ is wanton usurpation ; 
it is flagrant outrage ; it is violent perversion of the whole 
theory of Republican government. It inures solely to the 
apparent advantage and yet; I believe, to the permanent dis- 
honor of the Democratic party. It is by reason of this tram- 
pling down of human rights, this ruthless seizure of unlawful 
power, that the Democratic party holds the popular branch of 
Congress to-day and will in less than ninety days have control 
of this body also, thus grasping the entire Legislative depart- 
ment of the Government through the unlawful capture of the 
Southern States. If the proscribed vote of the South were 
cast as its lawful owners desire, the Democratic party could 
not gain control. Nay, if the ballot of the colored man were 
not counted on the other side, against the instincts and the 
interests, against the principles and the prejudices, of its law- 
ful owners, Democratic success would be hopeless. It is not 
enough, then, for modern Democratic tactics that the negro 
vote shall be silenced ; the demand goes farther and insists 



SOUTHERN ABUSE OF ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. 207 

that it shall be counted on the Democratic side, that all the 
representatives in Congress and all the Presidential electors 
apportioned by reason of the negro vote shall be so cast and 
so controlled as to insure Democratic success — regardless of 
justice, in defiance of law. 

This great wrong is wholly unprovoked. I doubt if it be in 
tlie power of the most searching investigation to show that 
in any Southern State during the period of Republican control 
any legal voter was ever debarred from the freest exercise of 
his suffrage. Even the revenges which would have leaped into 
life with many who despised the negro were buried out of sight 
with a magnanimity which the " superior race " fail to follow 
and seem reluctant to recognize. I know it is said in reply to 
such charges against the Southern elections as I am now review- 
ing, that unfairness of equal gravity prevails in Northern elec- 
tions. I hear it in many quarters and read it in the papers 
that in the late exciting election in Massachusetts intimidation 
and bulldozing, if not so rough and rancorous as in the South, 
were yet as wide-spread and effective. 

I have read and yet I refuse to believe that the distinguished 
gentleman, who made an energetic but unsuccessful canvass for 
the governorship of that State, has indorsed and approved these 
charges, and I have accordingly made my resolution broad 
enough to include their thorough investigation. I am not 
demanding fair elections in the South without demanding fair 
elections in the North also. But venturing to speak for the 
New England States, of whose laws and customs I know some- 
thing, I dare assert that in the late election in Massachusetts, 
or any of her neighboring Commonwealths, it will be impossible 
to find even one case where a voter was driven from the polls, 
where a voter did not have the fullest, fairest, freest opportunity 
to cast the ballot of his choice and have it honestly and faith- 
fully counted in the returns. Suffi^age on this continent was 
first made universal in New England, and in the administra- 
tion of their affairs her people have found no other appeal 
necessary than that which is addressed to their honesty of con- 
viction and to their intelligent self-interest. If there be any 
thing different to disclose I pray you show it to us that we 
may amend our ways. 



208 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

But whenever a feeble protest is made against such injustice 
as I have described in the South, the response we receive comes 
to us in tlie form of a taunt, " What are you going to do about 
it ? " and " How do you propose to help yourselves ? " This is 
the stereotyped answer of defiance which intrenched wrong 
always gives to inquiring justice. Those who imagine it to 
be conclusive do not know the temper of the American people. 
For let me assure you that against the complicated outrage 
upon the right of representation lately triumphant in the South 
there will be arrayed many phases of public opinion in the 
North not often hitherto in harmony. Men who have cared 
little, and affected to care less, for the rights or the wrongs of 
the negro suddenly find that vast monetary and commercial 
interests, great questions of revenue, adjustments of tariff, 
investments in manufactures, in railways, and in mines, are 
under the control of a Democratic Congress whose majority 
was obtained by depriving the negro of his rights under a com- 
mon Constitution and common laws. Men who have expressed 
disgust with the waving of bloody shirts and have been offended 
with talk about negro equality are beginning to perceive that 
the question of to-day relates more pressingly to the equality 
of white men under this Government, and that however care- 
less they may be about the rights or the wrongs of the negro, 
they are jealous and tenacious about the rights of their own 
race and the dignity of their own firesides and their own 
kindred. 

I know something of public opinion in the North. I know a 
great deal about the views, wishes, and purposes of the Repub- 
lican party of the Nation. Within that entire great organiza- 
tion there is not one man, whose opinion is entitled to be quoted, 
that does not desire peace and harmony and friendship and 
a patriotic and fraternal union between the North and the 
South. This wish is spontaneous and universal throughout the 
Northern States ; and yet, among men of character and sense, 
there is surely no need of attempting to deceive ourselves as 
to the precise truth. First pure, then peaceable. Gush will 
not remove a grievance, and no disguise of State rights will 
close the eyes of our people to the necessity of correcting a 
great National wrong. Nor should the South make the fatal 



SOUTHERN ABUSE OF ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. 209 

mistake of concluding that injustice to the negro is not also 
injustice to the white man ; nor should it ever be forgotten that 
for the wrongs of both a remedy will assuredly be found. The 
war, with all its costly sacrifices, was fought in vain unless 
equal rights for all classes be established in all the States of 
the Union. In words which are those of friendship, however 
they may be accepted, I tell the men of the South here on this 
floor and beyond this Chamber, that even if they could strip 
the negro of his Constitutional rights they can never perma- 
nently maintain the inequality of white men in this nation. 
They can never make a white man's vote in the South doubly 
as powerful in the administration of the Government as a white 
man's vote in the North. 

In a memorable debate in the House of Commons, Mr. 
Macaulay reminded Daniel O'Connell, when he was moving 
for Repeal, that the English Whigs had endured calumny, abuse, 
popular fury, loss of position, exclusion from Parliament rather 
than that the great agitator himself should be less than a British 
subject ; and Mr. Macaulay warned him that they would never 
suffer him to be more. Let me now remind you that the Gov- 
ernment, under whose protecting flag we sit to-day, sacrificed 
myriads of lives and expended thousands of millions of treas- 
ure that our countrymen of the South should remain citizens 
of the United States, having equal personal rights and equal 
political privileges with all other citizens. I venture, now 
and here, to warn the men of the South, in the exact words 
of Macaulay, that we will never suffer them to be more! 

[Note. —The resolution offered by Mr. Blaine was amended by assigning the 
work of investigation to a special committee instead of tlie Judiciary. The report 
of the well-kuown " Teller Committee " was the result of the movement.] 



210 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



SPEECH OF MR. BLAINE AT THE DINNER OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, 
DEC. 23, 1878. 

[The President of the Society, Mr. D. F. Applcton, called on Senator Blaine 
to respond to the following toast, introducing him, not as a native, but as a 
representative man from New England: — 

"New England Character — adapted to every requirement: it fits her sons 
not only to fill, but to adorn every station." Mr. Blaine's response is given 
below.] 

Gentlemen of the New England Society, — Your 
President has kindly relieved me from a personal explanation. 
I am only a brother-in-law, so to speak. Brothers-in-law are 
useful in families occasionally, and in a New-England family, 
where modesty is the prevailing fault, and where you can 
rarely induce one of the direct blood and descent to say any 
thing in praise of his race, it is, perhaps, fortunate that, unem- 
barrassed by personal prudery, I can speak my mind freely 
about you. I never saw New England until after I was a man 
grown, but I have lived more tha^n half my life on its soil, and 
I have six children, who represent the ninth generation in 
descent from ancestors who belonged to the old Massachusetts 
colony. I am ready to say, Mr. President, in any presence, 
recollecting, as I always do, with pride, my Pennsylvania birth 
and my Scotch and Scotch-Irish ancestry — I am ready to say, 
that in the settlement of this continent and the shaping and 
moulding of its free institutions, the leading place belongs to 
New England. Every chapter of its stalwart history is 
weighty with momentous events. A small number of immi- 
grants came in 1G20 ; there was no appreciable increase of irami- 
o:ration until after 1G30 : there was none after 1640. The 
twenty-one thousand men who came in those brief years are 
the progenitors of a race that includes one-third of the people 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE NEW ENGLANJ) SOCIETY. 211 

of the United States of America. They are the progenitors of 
a race of people twice as numerous as all who spoke the Eng- 
lish language when they came to these shores. 

The tyrannical father of Frederick the Great said to his 
tutor, " Instruct this young boy in history ; do not dwell much 
on the ancients, but let him know every thing that has hap- 
pened in the last hundred and fifty years." I submit to you, 
Mr. President, that the great event which has happened in the 
last hundred and fifty years has been tlie progress of the Eng- 
lish-speaking race. Not seven millions of people spoke the 
tongue when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth; not 
seventeen millions spoke it when the American Revolution 
was born. In this hundred years the progress of other nations 
has been great. The German empire has been re-formed, and 
is stronger and firmer than it ever existed before ; Russia, 
springing from semi-barbarism, has coine to be a first-class 
power; Italy has been born again, and promises something 
of its ancient grandeur; France has fallen and risen, and fallen 
and again risen under the aid and inspiration of Republican 
energy and patriotism. Yet with all this progress of all these 
countries, the one great fact of the last hundred years is that 
when the revolution of the American colonies was fought, the 
English-speaking people of the world were not 17,000,000, and 
to-day tliey are 100,000,000 in number. 

Another fact — I pray you will excuse my reviewing history. 
We are in the habit of deploring the hardships of the men who 
settled New England, and in deploring their hardships we 
are in the habit of alluding to them as a poor and friendless 
and downcast race of men. They Avere any thing else. They 
had the nerve and courage to endure hardship. Tliey were a 
class of men, the like of whom never before and never since 
emigrated from any land. They were men of intelligence and 
learning: they were men of property. The twenty-one thou- 
sand men that came to Ncav England and settled the five colo- 
nies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, Connecticut, 
and Providence, brought with them according to authentic his- 
tory, five hundred thousand pounds — two and a half millions 
of our dollars. Reckoning money as worth then six times what 
it is now, this property represents, in its power to purchase, at 



212 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

least fifteen millions of our money of to-clay. Show me any 
other twenty-one thousand emigrants in this workl that ever 
carried fifteen millions of property with them — anywhere ! 
How few towns in the United States of twenty-one thousand 
people to-day represent more than fifteen miWions of property! 

These Puritan emigrants were men as I have already said of 
property and education and large experience in affairs ; they 
were men who were accomplished in the literature of Milton 
and Locke and Lightfoot ; they were men in whose ministry 
were John Robinson and Brewster and Davenport ; they were 
men in whose statesmanship were Cromwell and Hampden and 
Pym ; they were men who, in all the great departments of civil 
polity and in all the great features of personal and individual 
character, led the van of the English race. When we wonder 
at what has been done in New England we wonder without due 
reflection, for those men brought with them all the elements of 
the great success that has since crowned their efforts. They 
brought one thing which has endured well, and that was the 
belief that if you set in motion a principle founded on truth, it 
will go through. [Applause.] They sturdily believed, in the 
language of one of their most eloquent men, that an army of 
principles will penetrate where an army of men cannot enter. 
The Rhine cannot stop it or the ocean arrest its progress. It 
will march to the horizon of the world, and it will conquer. 
And the conquest is permanent ! 

That this strong race has been abused and reviled, is, of course, 
inevitable. You remember the old fellow in London, fumbling 
with his watch-chain, who replied to some one complimenting 
him on its strength, " Of course it is strong. There isn't a pick- 
pocket in London as hasn't taken a tug at it in his day." There 
is hardly any one outside of New England who has not taken a 
hand in abusing the Yankee race. I never heard it abused in 
quite so eloquent a manner as by our friend of the Central Rail- 
road this evening when speaking for the West. Assuredly 
I agree with him that New-Englanders ought to remember the 
influence which the West has had upon New England, and by 
the West you must remember New England means all of the 
North American continent outside of her own borders. We 
are constantly telling the Western people how much New Eng- 



ADDRESS BEFOKE THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY. 213 

land has done for tliera, and in sober truth it lias done a great 
deal. But let me frankly acknowledge that the West has 
moulded and modified and developed and advanced New Eng- 
land in a degree which New England does not perhaps fully 
appreciate. Just as New England has re-acted upon Old Eng- 
land, so the New-Englanders who have gone West have re-acted 
upon the New-Engianders who have remained at home. The 
New England of fifty years ago of which our reverend friend, 
Dr. Storrs, spoke so eloquently, does not exist to-day. The 
New England of which my friend Depew has spoken of as 
swarming into New York is a thing of the past. They have 
taken possession. The current has practically been equal- 
ized, and by action and re-action, New-England ideas, potent 
always in the West and throughout the country, have become 
still more potent by the fact that the original source of the 
influence has been largely affected by the streams which have 
returned to fructify and enrich at home. 

Another feature. We forget that when the Pilgrim Fathers 
came to this country they left a state of affairs in England which 
boded revolution, and which in effect wrought out two revolu- 
tions before the English people achieved the rights for which 
they were contending. Yet, in 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers 
planted in this country the exact right? wdiich those at home 
in England obtained by the beheading of Charles I. and the 
expulsion of his son, James II., from the throne. They brought 
with them the abandonment of feudalism ; they brought the 
abolition of primogeniture ; they brought the annulment of the 
entail law ; they brought the destruction of the privileges of 
the nobility ; they brought and founded here sixty-eight years 
before it was realized in England, all the great reforms for which 
two bloody revolutions were fought — revolutions which cost 
one king his head and another his crown in Old England. 

Mr. President, I should like to see this brilliant company 
seated at a typical New England feast of the olden time, — a 
feast spread on tables that came over in the 3Iai/floicer, — 
you can find plenty of them at home ; the guests seated on 
chairs that belonged to John Alden and Miles Standish, — 
and no well-regulated New-England family is without a broken 
assortment of them. It would be extremely edifying to see a 



214 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

feast that should reproduce as far as might be the harder times 
and the coarser fare wliich they endured in order that we might 
enjoy the more bounteous and more sumptuous repast with 
which we are indulged to-day by the New England Society of 
New York — and I almost catch my breath when I say the 
New England Society of New York — you do not know how 
we regard it in New England! There are a great many men 
in New England who aspire to a seat in Congress, first in 
the House, and then in the Senate, and thence forward or 
backward to the Cabinet, and then, under the inspiration of 
the strong air and the mountain scenery of Vermont aspire 
still higher [turning round to Mr. Evarts — a movement which 
provoked loud laughter]. But that is only the few. The 
one thing wliich every boy, as he grows up in New England, 
looks forward to as the crowning glory of his life, is to dine on 
some auspicious day with the New England Society of New 
York. Without this, his sum of human happiness is incom- 
plete. I have received your invitation for many years past, but 
it has been my misfortune never to have been able to be present 
until now, and I am here this evening to acknowledge all the 
pleasure I enjoy in the present, and to express my regret for all 
that I have missed in the_ past ! And while we are enjoying 
this dinner and complimenting ourselves — or I am compli- 
menting you — I should like, Mr. President, to impress upon 
every New-Englander, whether seated at the primitive tal)le 
of coarse fare or the modern table of costly luxury, that with 
one voice we should echo the declarations of our distin- 
guished friend, the Secretary of the Treasury [Mr. Sherman], 
in favor of an honest dollar, and declare with equal earnestness 
our faith in an honest ballot ! The principles of our Fathers 
demand that we should supplement the peaceful and prom- 
ising picture drawn by the eloquent Secretary of State (Mr. 
Evarts) with the resolution that wherever an honest dollar cir- 
culates, an honest ballot shall sustain it. I could wish that in 
this respect the habit and the practice of the New England 
States might spread rapidly and succeed completely through- 
out the whole country. For I am reminded, with a citizen 
of Massachusetts on one side of me and a native of Massa- 
chusetts on the other, that in that great Commonwealth, in a 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY. 215 

hotly-contested election, in which the passions and pride and 
prejudices of men were enlisted, there was a contest so close 
that the party in power, having, as we would sa}^ all the 
counters in their possession, in a total poll of more than one 
hundred thousand votes were beaten by a majority of one, — 
and Edward Everett the Whig Avalked out and Marcus Morton 
the Democrat walked in. None but the English-speaking peo- 
ple have yet been fully educated in the belief that a majority 
of one is as good as a majority of one hundred thousand, but 
we do believe it and we practice it and abide by it in New 
England. I need not say that a majority going even into the 
millions, if it be founded on force or on fraud, will never bring 
contentment or peace or honor or profit to the people of the 
United States. 

Mr. President, I thank you very sincerely, I thaidv you all, 
gentlemen of the New England Society, for the cordiality of 
your welcome. In this inspiring scene, in this brilliant assem- 
blage, surrounded with every thing that gives comfort and 
grace and elegance to social life, in this meeting, protected by 
law, itself representing law, let me recall one sad memory, — 
the memory of those who in 1620 landed on the Plymouth 
shore, and did not survive the first year. Of all the men 
engaged in heroic contests, those deserve our tenderest remem- 
brance who, making all the sacrifice and enduring all the 
hardship, are not permitted to enjoy the triumph. Quincy died 
before the first shot was fired in the Revolution which he did 
so much to create ; Warren was killed at the first clash of arms 
in defense of the cause which was so sacred to his patriotic 
heart; Reynolds, rallying his corps for the critical battle of 
Gettysburg, fell while yet its fate was doubtful ; McPherson, 
in the great march to the sea, lost his life before the triumphant 
close of that daring and romantic expedition. For these and 
all like unto them, from Plymouth Rock to the last battle- 
field of the civil war, who perished in their pride, and perished 
before they could know tliat they were dying not in vain but 
for a cause destined to victory, I offer, and I am sure 3'ou will 
join with me in offering, our veneration and our homage .' 



216 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION TO THE PACIFIC SLOPE. 



[Tlie question of abrogating so much of the Burlingame Treaty as permitted 
the free immigration of Cliinese was before the Senate of the United States in 
February, 1S79. On the 14th of that month Mr. Blaine atldressed the Senate as 
follows : — ] 

Mil. President, — In the remarks made yesterday l)y the 
honorable senator from Ohio [Mr. Matthews] he intimated, if 
he did not directly assert, that the Government of the United 
States had solicited from the Chinese Empire the treaty now 
under consideration. The statement is I think, though of 
course not so intended, the exact reverse of the historic fact. 
What is known as the Reed Treaty had given to the merchants 
of the United States, and to all who desired to trade in China, 
the facilities they desired. The Burlingame Treaty involving 
other points was certainly asked from the United States in the 
most impressive manner by a Chinese embassy. The eminent 
gentleman who had gone to China as our minister, had trans- 
ferred his services to the Chinese Empire, and returning to 
us with great prestige at the head of a special embassy from 
China, with a great number of friends at home, was able to do 
what perhaps no other man then living could have done for 
China. He was often spoken of during his lifetime as merely 
a stump speaker. He has been ten years in his grave ; and I 
desire, now that his name is before us, to refer to him as a 
man of great address and great ability, a man who showed his 
power by the commanding position which he acquired in the 
Chinese Empire and by the influence which he exerted in his 
own country in its relations to China. 

This subject divides itself naturally into two parts, one of 
form and one of substance. The one of form is whether we 
may rightfully adopt this mode of terminating the treaty. 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 217 

The second and graver question is whether it is desirable to 
exclude Chinese immigration from this country. 1 noticed 
that the senator from Ohio yesterday in discussing the first of 
these questions called the attention of the Senate to the gravity 
of the obligation which exists between the two countries, but 
he stopjDed reading at a very significant point. He read the 
following paragraph or part of a paragraph from the fifth article 
of the treaty : — 

" The United States of America and the Emperor of China cordially 
recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and 
allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of the free migration and emigra- 
tion of their citizens and subjects, respectively, from the one country to the 
other, for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents." 

Here the honorable senator from Ohio stopped, and it was 
well for his argument that he did, for directly after tlie words 
that he read are the following : — 

" The high contracting parties, therefore, join in reprobating any other 
than an entire!// coluntari/ emicjration for these purposes. They consequently 
agree to i^ass laws making it a penal offense for a citizen of the United 
States or Chinese subjects to take Chinese subjects either to the United 
States or to nay other foreign country, or for a Chinese subject or citizen of 
the United States to take citizens of the United States to China or to any 
other foreign country without their free and voluntary consent respectively." 

I maintain that the latter clause of the treaty has been per- 
sistently violated by China from the hour it was made. In the 
sense in which we receive immigration from Europe not one 
Chinese immigrant has ever come to these shores. The qualify- 
ing w^ords were understood at the time to have been penned by 
Mr. Seward. They are worth repeating ; and as my honorable 
friend from Ohio did not read them yesterday, I will read 
them again in his hearing : — 

*' The high contracting parties, therefore, join in reprobating any other 
than an entirely voUintari/ cmir/rution for these purposes." 

The words are worth emphasizing ; not merely " voluntary," 
it must be "• eyitirely voluntary," and then each nation is to 
make laws to secure this end. 1 am informed by those who 
are more familiar with this subject than I am, that no notice 
has been received at the State Department showing that China 
has ever complied with that provision of the treaty requiring 



218 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

her to make laws regulating emigration. Still less has she 
attempted to enforce a law on the subject. The mere mak- 
ing of a law and not enforcing it would be no compliance 
with the treaty. The Chinese agree, in other words, to enforce 
the provision that there should be nothing else than "voluntary" 
emigration, an " entirely voluntary " emigration. They have 
never done as they agreed, they have been absolutely faithless 
on that point. 

The treaty stands as broken and defied by China from the 
hour it was made to this time. Its terras have never been 
complied with. We have been compelled to legislate agamst 
it. We legislated against it in the Cooly law. The Chinese 
were so flagrantly violating it that statutes of the United States 
were enacted to contravene the evil the Chinese were doing. 
The evil has gone on, probably not so grossly since these laws 
were passed as before, but in effect the same. The jDoint which 
the senator makes in regard to our Punic faith in attempting 
to break this treaty, is therefore answered by the fact that the 
treaty has been broken continuously by the other power. 

The senator from Ohio asked what we should do in a similar 
case if the other contracting party were Great Britain or Ger- 
many or France or any power that was able to make war. I 
ask the honorable senator what he would advise us to do if 
Great Britain or France or Germany should locate six commer- 
cial companies in New York, whose business it should be to 
bring to this country the worst class and the lowest class 
of the population of those three kingdoms ? What would the 
honorable senator from Ohio say to that? or does he hesitate to 
declare what w^e should say to it ? 

Mr. Matthews. Does the senator desire an answer? 

Mr. Blaine. Yes, if the senator pleases. 

Mr. jMatthews. Then, Mr. President, I would say this, 
that instead of inaugurating an arbitrary and ex parte act of 
legislation on our own part, giving our own construction to the 
treaty and the conduct of the other party under it, I would, 
through the usual diplomatic representative of this country, 
make representations to that Government making complaints 
of the alleged breach of the treaty, and ask what answer could 
be made to that ; and only in the event, as a last resort, of a 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 219 

contumacious refusal to obey the plain requisitions of the treaty 
obligation, would I resort to a repudiation of our own obliga- 
tions under it. 

Mr. Blaine. Ah I 1 asked him what he would do in ease 
the contracting parties had themselves broken the treaty and 
we were the victims of the breach. He answers me that he 
would take hat in hand and bow politely before them, and ask 
them if they would not behave better ! What are we to do as 
a measure of self-defense when they have broken it, and taken 
tiie initiative ? I say that this country and this Senate would 
not hesitate to call any European power to account. The argu- 
ment the senator meant to emplo}^ Avas that we were doing 
toward a helpless power, not able to make war against us, 
that which we would not do if a cannon were pointed toward 
us by a strong power. Does the senator doubt that if any one 
of these countries should locate six commercial companies here 
to import the worst portion of their population and put it upon 
our shores (and you cannot find so bad a population in all 
Europe as that of which I am speaking), that we would hesitate 
in our course towards the offending power? 

In regard to this treaty, the senator says we should give 
notice. It has been stated many times in the hearing of the 
Senate, that nearly one year ago we called the attention of the 
Executive to this matter. Certainly it must be the presump- 
tion of Congress that the President did his duty in the prem- 
ises. It is not for any senator here to speak of what he has 
done or what he has not done. The presumption is that all 
departments have done their duty ; and the plain duty of the 
Executive was to bring this resolution by way of notice to the 
attention of the Chinese Government. There is another fea- 
ture to which I beg the honorable senator from Ohio to direct 
his attention. I hold in my liand a book which contains all the 
treaties which have been made by the United States with for- 
eign powers from the organization of the Government to the 
year 1873. The treaties are about two hundred and thirty in 
number, I think ; about one-half of them with European powers, 
the remainder with South American, Central American, Mexi- 
can, Asiatic, and African countries. I believe I could say, 
although I am a little modest about universal affirmations, I 



220 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

believe it is almost true as a universal affirmation, that you 
cannot find, with tlie exception of the Burlingame Treaty, any 
one in that whole list relating to a commercial connection, which 
does not either terminate itself by a certain date or provide 
the mode of its termination. Almost all of them have a given 
date upon which they expire. Some of them have a time within 
which either party may give notice, but there is a clause in 
almost every one of them providing that by a certain process 
either country may free itself from the obligations that it 
assumed. The Burlingame Treaty is peculiar ; it relates to a 
commercial and personal connection of trade and of emigration, 
but it does not say that it shall last ten years or twenty years, 
or any other period; it is interminable in its provisions; it 
does not provide that we shall give notice in a certain way, 
or that China shall give notice in a certain way. There is no 
provision in the world by which it can be terminated unless one 
of the parties shall take the initiative, as is now proposed. 

It is, " I repeat," evident that one party or the other must 
take the initiative. The senator from Ohio says he would go to 
the Emperor and make certain representations. Then I ask the 
honorable senator, Suppose the Emperor should refuse, what 
would he do? Suppose the Emperor should say, "You have 
entered into a treaty with my Government for all time ; its 
very terms show that there was to be no limit to it." I ask 
the honorable senator from Ohio what he would then do? 
Suppose we are unanimously of opinion here that the treaty 
ought not to continue, what would the honorable senator do in 
case the Emperor should say, " I desire to stand by that 
treaty"? What then? 

Mr. Matthews. Does the senator wish an answer ? 

Mr. Blaine. Yes, if it be agreeable to the honorable senator 
from Ohio. 

Mr. Matthews. I should take it into consideration. [Laugh- 
ter.] 

Mr. Blaine. That is a very exact and executive way of 
doing things. The honorable senator would consider. That 
is just about as definite a point as I supposed the sena- 
tor would come to. If the Senate unanimously determine 
that this treaty ought to be ended and we send an embassy, 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 221 

as he suggests, to the Emperor and the Emperor says, "No, 
I think it ought not to be ended," the senator says he would 
come back and sit down and take it into serious considera- 
tion. 

The learned senator from Ohio, eminent in the law as he is 
known to be, read us a lesson upon the great obligations that 
rest upon us as a nation of honorable people, as if indeed 
we were about to do something in the way of terminating a 
treaty that would give us a bad name and fame among the 
nations of the earth. 

In answer to the honorable senator, without attempting to 
defend all that has been done by various nations in regard 
to the termination of treaties, let me say that it has been the 
usual habit and is laid down in the very principia of the law 
of nations (which I need not quote), that when a people find a 
treaty "pernicious to the naticm," — the very words of Vattel, 
— they may terminate it. We took advantage of this French 
authority on a very memorable occasion. The treaty which we 
made with France in 1778, a treaty that was considered to be 
the origin of our strength in the Revolutionary war, contained 
this article : — 

" Neither of the two parties shall conclude either truce or_ peace with 
Great Britain without the formal consent of the other, first obtained." 

The French afterward said that the Americans, without giv- 
ing them the slightest notice, " stealthily precipitated " a peace, 
and left them open either to war or negotiation ; and when we 
were accused of it, we quoted their own author and replied that 
this action was absolutely essential to the life of our young 
Nation. We were compelled to do it, and we did it. Self- 
preservation is the first law of nations, as w^ell as of nature, 
and we resorted to it. 

I proceed, Mr. President, to the second branch of my sub- 
ject. The Chinese question is not new in this body. We have 
had it here very often, and have had it here in important rela- 
tions, and I wish to lay down this principle, that, so far as my 
vote is concerned, I will not admit a man by immigration to 
this country wdiom I am not willing to place on the basis of a 
citizen. Let me repeat that we ought not to permit in this 



222 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

country of universal suffrage the ininiigration of a great people, 
great in numbers, whom we ourselves declare to be uttcily 
unfit for citizenship. 

What do we say on that point ? In the Senate of the United 
States, on the fourth day of July, 1870, a patriotic day, we were 
amending the naturalization laws. We had practically made 
all the negroes of the United States voters ; at least we had 
said they should not be deprived of suffrage by reason of race 
or color. We had admitted them all, and we then amended the 
naturalization laws so that the emigrant from Africa could be- 
come a citizen of the United States. Then Senator Trumbull 
moved to add : — 

" Or persons born in the Chinese Empire." 

He said : — 

" I have offered this amendment so as to bring the distinct question before 
the Senate, whetlier they will vote to naturalize persons from Africa, and 
vote to refuse to naturalize those vi^ho come from China. I ask for the yeas 
and nays on my amendment." 

The yeas and nays were as follows on the question of whether 
we would ever admit a Chinaman to become an American citi- 
zen. The yeas were : — 

"JNIessrs. Fenton, Fowler, McDonald, Pomeroy, Rice, Robertson, Sprague, 
Sumner, and Trumbull. — 9." 

The nays were : — 

"Messrs. Bayard, Boreman, Chandler, Conkling, Corbett, Cragin, Drake, 
Gilbert, Hamilton of Maryland, Hamlin, Harlan, Howe, McCreery, Morrill 
of Vermont, Morton, Nye, Osborn, Ramsey, Saulsbury, Sawyer, Scott, 
Stewart, Stockton, Thayer, Thurman, Tipton, Vickers, Warner, Willey, 
Williams, and Wilson. — 31." 

It will thus be seen that the vote was thirty-one against 
nine in a Senate three-fourths Republican, declaring that the 
Chinaman never ought to be made a citizen. I think this set- 
tles the whole question, if the position assumed by that vote 
was a correct one, because in our sj^stem of Government as it 
is to-day you cannot, with safety to all, permit a large immi- 
gration of people who are not to be made citizens. The senator 
from, California [Mr. Sargent] tells us that already the male 
adult Chinese in California are as numerous as the white 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION, 223 

voters. I take him as an authority from his own State, as I 
should expect liim to take my statement as authority about my 
own State. 

It seems to me that if we adopt as a permanent policy the 
free immigration of those who, by overwhelming- votes in both 
branches of Congress must forever remain political and social 
pariahs in a great free Government, we have introduced an 
element that we cannot control. We cannot stop where we 
are. We are compelled to do one of two things — either ex- 
clude the immigration of Chinese or if we admit them, include 
them in the great family of citizens. 

The argument is often put forward that there is no special 
danger that large numbers of Chinese will come here ; that it 
is not a practical question ; and as the honorable senator from 
Ohio is free to answer, I ask him if the number should mount 
up into the millions, what would be his view? 

Mr. Matthews. The senator seems to expect a reply to his 
inquiry. I would say that when there was a. reasonable appre- 
hension by the United States of the immigration mounting up 
to such numbers, then I would take that into consideration. 

Mr. Blaine. Take that into consideration also ! The sena- 
tor is definite ! If the Chinese should amount to millions in 
the population of the Pacific slope, he would begin to take it 
into consideration ! That is practical legislation ! That is 
legislating for an evil which is upon us to-day ! The senator's 
statesmanship is certainly of a considerate kind. 

A word now about the question of numbers. Did it ever 
occur to my honorable friend from Ohio that the large numbers, 
the incalculable hordes in China, are much nearer to the Pacific 
coast of the United States, in point of money and transit, in 
point of expense of reaching it, than the people of Kansas ? A 
man in Shanghai or Hong-Kong can be delivered at San Fran- 
cisco more cheaply than a man in Omaha. I do not speak of 
the Atlantic coast, where the population is still more remote ; 
but you may take the Mississippi Valley, Illinois, Iowa, Ne- 
braska, Kansas, Missouri, all the great commonwealths of that 
valley, and they are, in point of expense, farther off from the 
Pacific slope than the population of China and Japan. 

I am told by those who are familiar with the commercial 



224 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

affairs of the Pacific slope that a person can be sent from any of 
tlie great Chinese ports to San Francisco for about thirty dol- 
lars. I suppose in an emigrant train over the Pacific Railroad 
from Omaha, not to speak of the expense of reaching Omaha, 
but from that point alone, it would cost lifty dollars per head. 
So that in })()int of cheap transportation to California the 
Chinaman to-day has an advantage over an American laborer in 
any part of the country, except in the case of those who are 
already on the Pacific coast. 

Ouglit we to exclude them? The question lies in my mind 
thus: Either the Caucasian race will possess the Pacific slope or 
the Mongolian race will j)ossess it. Give Mongolians the start 
to-day, with the keen thrust of necessity behind them, and with 
the ease of transportation and the inducement of higher wages 
before them, and it is entirely probable if not demonstrable 
that while we are filling up the other portions of the continent, 
they will occupy the great space of country between the Sierras 
and the Pacific coast. The Chinese are themselves to-day estab- 
lishing steamship lines; they are themselves to-day providing 
the means of transportation ; and wlien gentlemen say that we 
admit from all other countries, where do you find the slightest 
parallel? In a Republic especially, in any Government that 
maintains itself, the unit of order and of administration is in the 
family. The emigrants that come to us from all portions of 
the British Isles, from Germany, from Norway, from Denmark, 
from France, from Spain, from Italy, come here with the idea of 
the family as much engraven on their minds and on their cus- 
toms and habits as ours. The Asiatic cannot live with our 
population and make a homogeneous element. The idea of 
comparing European immigration with an immigration that has 
no regard to family, that does not recognize the relation of hus- 
band and wife, that does not observe the tie of parent and child, 
that does not feel in the slightest degree the humanizing and 
the ennobling influences of the hearth-stone and the fireside ! 
When gentlemen talk loosely about emigration from European 
countries as contrasted with that, they certainly are forgetting 
history and forgetting themselves. 

My honorable colleague [Mr. Hamlin] and the senator from 
"Wisconsin [Mr. Howe] voted that the ('hinaman ought not to 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 225 

be a citizen of this country, voted that he ought not to become 
a voter in this country. My honorable friend from Wisconsin 
now says, sotto voce, tliat he did not vote that the Cliinaman 
never shouki be enfranchised ; but he is like the honorable sena- 
tor from Ohio ; he voted " no," and then proceeded to take the 
question "into consideration" — leisurely, and he has been 
leisurely considering it for ten years. When the question was 
I before us, whether the Chinaman should be a subject of natu- 
Iralization, the senator from Wisconsin said "no," and he said 
;"no"at a time when he said the negro directly from Africa 
juiight come in and be naturalized. He said "no" at a time 
when every other immigrant from every portion of the habitable 
globe was the subject of naturalization. I think the Chinaman 
in California, if he is to be forced upon us in great numbers, 
w^ould be safer as a voter, dangerous as that would be, than as 
a political pariah. 

Mr. Howe. Why not apply that remedy ? 

Mr. Blaine. You do not remedy one evil by precipitating 
another evil. I wish to remove both. You only present me 
another evil. I am opposed to the Chinese coming here ; I am 
opposed to making them citizens; I am opposed to making them 
voters. But the senator from Wisconsin must contemplate 
the fact that with the ordinary immigration now going on, if 
the statistics given by the honorable senator from California 
are correct, we shall soon have a large majority of the male 
adults of California non-voters ; and with the Republic organ- 
ized as it is to-day, I do not believe that you can maintain a 
non-voting class in this country. Negro suffrage was a neces- 
sity. Abused as suffrage has been in the South, curtailed 
unfairly, it is still the shield and defense of that race ; and 
jwith all its imperfections and all its abuses and all its short- 
, comings by reason of his own ignorance or by the tyranny 
of others, the suffrage of the negro has wrought out, or has 
pointed the way by which shall be wrought out, his personal 
liberty, his political salvation. 

I have talked with a great many gentlemen on the opposite 
side of this question, and I never yet have seen one who did 
not, like the honorable senator from Ohio, desire to escape 
present responsibility, and take the subject into consideration 



226 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

when it came to the point of how far this immigration shall be 
permitted to go? The honorable senator declined to tell me 
where he would limit it. I have never yet found any one who 
would say that he would allow it to be illimitable. I have 
never yet found an advocate of Chinese immigration, who was 
willing to name a point where he would fix it and restrain 
it. Is there any senator on this floor — and I ask to be 
answered if there is — who will say that under the operation 
of the Burlingame Treaty, as it is now administered, he is 
willing that the Chinese should come in and occupy the three 
Pacific States to the exclusion of the whites ? I will repeat my 
question in another form : Should we be justified in sitting still 
here in the administration of this Government and permitting 
this treaty to remain in force and the immigration which it 
allows, to go forward until those three States of the Pacific side 
should be overridden by that population ? That is what I ask 
every senator. 

Mr. Hamlin. If my colleague wants an answer, I will give 
him one for myself. I will come a little nearer my colleague 
than the senator from Ohio ; I will take it into consideration 
now. I will meet every question as it shall arise, and I will 
state to my colleague how I would meet it when it shall arise. 
It has not arisen now. When the time shall come that I become 
satisfied that the population of China will overrun our country, 
and there shall be danger or imminent peril from that immigra- 
tion, I will join with my colleague in abrogating all treaties 
with them ; not one single little paragraph of a treaty, while 
we ask them to maintain it in its integrity for all the commer- 
cial advantages that the treaty bestows upon us, and all the 
protection that that treaty gives us to the right of trial by jury 
under our own laws. I will not meet it by an attempt to abro- 
gate a treaty upon a little point, while we are the beneficiaries 
in the great and substantial points. I am indifferent to all 
the danger that shall come away down into the stillness of 
ages from the immigration of the Chinese. Treat them, I will 
not say like pagans, because Confucius would shame us if 
we go to his counsel — treat them like Christians, and they 
will become good American citizens. [Applause in the gal- 
leries.] 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 227 

Mr. Blaine. But my colleague voted that they should not 
become American citizens. 

Mr. Hamlin. I do not want to interrupt my colleague, but 
I will state before the debate shall close, the reasons which were 
satisfactory to my mind for my vote then, and I am half inclined 
to believe that I will so state them that my colleague himself 
will see that I then voted right. 

Mr. Blaine. I would have voted with my colleague on 
that question, as I have already stated. 

Mr. Sargent. Will the senator from Maine [Mr. Blaine] 
allow me to justify a statement he has made ? I will take but 
a moment. I understood his colleague [Mr. Hamlin] to say 
that the average importation of Chinese during the last twenty 
years had been four thousand a year. 

Mr. Hamlin. Between four and five thousand. I think it 
is utterly impossible to state with precise accuracy what is the 
number of Chinese in this country at this time. I think, how- 
ever, it can be approximated very closely. The senator from 
California has stated the basis of his conclusions. Now I will 
give from the Alta Calif ornian Almanac^ published in San 
Francisco, the calculation, and I will read it to the Senate. It 
may be they have made an under-estimate, but they would not 
be very likely to do it in that community. 

Mr. Sargent. That paper is very strongly pro-Chinese, and 
the only one on the Pacific coast. 

Mr. Hamlin. The only one ! I think there are five in the 
city of San Francisco which favor the immigration of Chinese. 
I have two or three of them here. In thirty years, according 
to the official report, the gain in the arrivals over departures 
has been 130,863, or at the rate of 4,662 per annum. The 
deaths, according to the Alta Almanac, page 43, number about 
20 for every 1,000 per annum ; but taking the largest number 
given for arrivals, 233,000, and taking the official figure of 
returns, 93,000, and deaths of 20 in every 1,000 per annum, 
and you have 128,000 deducted from the 233,000, leaving the 
number on this continent at the present time the enormous 
number of about 100,0001 The Alta Almanac further gives, 
on page 43, the number in California at 78,000, while I under- 
stand the official record of the Chhiese themselves places the 



228 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

number in California at but 60,000. Now, I say to my col- 
league, it was upon that information that I said the arrivals 
beyond the departures had been between four and five 
thousand. 

Mr. Blaine. Still the wonder grows with me that if the 
aggregate immigration is so small and will remain so small, as 
my colleague states, he should still have thought and have 
voted that they ought not to be citizens, and could not be 
safely trusted with the elective franchise. All that my honor- 
able colleague has said makes me wonder still more at that 
vote, although, as I state, I would have given the same vote 
with him ; but I would have given it on entirely different con- 
siderations and with an entirely different view. I am sure, 
even if I repeat myself in so saying, that no gentleman can 
justify an indefinite immigration from China who is not willing 
to assume and justify all the responsibilities of making the 
immigrants citizens of the United States, because we cannot 
continue to exjjose the Pacific coast to that immigration with 
a non-voting class largely outnumbering the voting class. 

The senator from Ohio [Mr. Matthews] made light of the 
race trouble. I supposed if there be an}^ part of the world where 
a man would not make light of a race trouble it was the 
United States. I supposed if there were any people in the world 
that had a race trouble on hand it was the American people. 
I supposed if the admonitions of our own history were any 
thing to us, we should regard the race trouble as the one thing 
to be dreaded, the one thing to be avoided. We are not 
through with it yet. It has cost us a great many lives ; it has 
cost us a great many millions of treasure. Does any man feel 
that we are safely through with it now? Does any man here 
to-day assume that we have so entirely solved and settled all 
the troubles growing out of the negro-race trouble that we are 
prepared to invite a similar one ? If so, he learns a lesson from 
history which I have not been taught. If any gentleman, look- 
ing into the future of this country, sees, for certain sections 
of it at least, peace and good order and absolute freedom from 
any trouble growing out of race, he sees with more sanguine 
vision than mine. With this trouble already upon us, it would, 
in my judgment, be the last degree of recklessness deliberately 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 229 

to invite or permit another and possibly a far more serious one 
to be thrust upon us. 

Treat them like Christians, my colleague says ; and yet I be- 
lieve the Christian testimony from the Pacific coast is that the 
conversion of Chinese is largely a failure ; that the demoraliza- 
tion of the white race is a much more rapid result of the contact 
than the conversion of the Chinese race, and that up to this 
time there has been little progress made in the one direction 
while much evil has been done in the other. I heard the 
honorable senator from California who sits on this side of the 
Chamber [Mr. Booth] say that there is not, as we under- 
stand it, in all the one hundred and twenty thousand Chinese 
(whether I state the exact number does not matter in this 
point of view), there does not exist among the whole of them 
the relation of family. There is not a peasant's cottage in- 
habited by a Chinaman ; there is not a hearth-stone, as it 
is found and cherished in an American home, or an English 
home, or a German home, or a French home. There is not a 
domestic fireside in that sense ; and yet you say that it is en- 
tirely safe to sit down and quietly permit that mode of life to 
be fastened upon our country. A half-century ago this ques- 
tion could not have been made a practical one. Means of 
communication, ease of access, cheapness of transportation, 
have changed the issue, and forced it upoq, our attention. I 
believe now that if the Congress of the United States should 
in effect confirm the treaty and the status of immigration as 
it now is, law and order could not be maintained in California 
without the interposition of the military five years hence. Do 
I overstate that? 

Mr. Sargext. I am sorry to say that I think the senator 
does not overstate it. 

Mr. Blaine. I do not justify the brutality of the treatment 
of those Chinese who are here. That is greatly to be regretted 
and greatly to be condemned. But you must deal with things 
as you find them. If you foresee a conflict upon that coast by 
reason of an immigration that calls for the interposition of the 
military, I think it is a great deal wiser and more direct way 
to avoid the trouble by preventing the immigration. 

I have heard much of late about their cheap labor. I do not 



230 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

myself believe in cheap labor. I do not believe cheap labor 
should be an object of legislation, and it cannot be in a 
Republic. The wealthy classes in a Republic where suffrage is 
universal, cannot safely legislate for cheap labor. I repeat it. 
The wealth}- classes in a Republic where suffrage is universal, 
must not legislate in favor of cheap labor. Labor should not 
be cheap, and it should not be dear ; it should have its share, 
and it will have its share. There is not a laborer on the Pacific 
coast to-day — I say that to my honorable colleague whose whole 
life has been consistent and uniform in defense and advocacy of 
the interests of the laboring classes — there is not a laboring- 
man on the* Pacific coast to-day who does not feel wounded 
and grieved by the competition that comes from this immigra- 
tion. Then the answer is, "But, are not American laborers 
equal to Chinese laborers ? " I answer that question by asking 
another. Were not free white American laborers equal to 
African slaves in the South? When you tell me that the 
Chinaman driving out the free American laborer only proves 
the superiority of the Chinaman, I ask you if the African slave 
driving out the free white labor from the South proved the 
superiority of slave labor? The conditions are not unlike: 
the parallel is not complete, and yet it is a parallel. 

Chinese labor is servile labor. It is not free labor such 
as we intend to develop and encourage and build up in this 
country. It is labor that comes here under a mortgage. It is 
labor that comes here to subsist on what the American laborer 
cannot subsist on. You cannot work a man who must have 
beef and bread, and would like beer, in competition with a 
man who can live on rice. In all such conflicts and in all such 
struggles the result is not to bring up the man who lives on 
rice to the beef and bread standard, but it is to bring down the 
man living on beef and bread to the rice standard. Slave labor 
degraded free labor. It took out its respectability, it put an 
odious caste upon it. It throttled the prosperity of one of the 
fairest portions of the Union ; and a worse than slave labor will 
throttle and impair the prosperity of a still finer and fairer sec- 
tion of the Union. We can choose here to-day whether our 
legislation shall be in the interest of the American free laborer 
or in favor of the servile laborer from China. 



chinp:se immigration. 231 

I rose, Mr. President, to speak briefly. I have had many 
interruptions or I should have long since taken my seat. In 
conclusion, I maintain that the legislation now proposed is 
in strictest accord with international obligation on these two 
grounds : First we have given notice ; and second the Chinese 
Empire has persistently violated the treaty. Whether you take 
it on the one ground or the other, we are entirely justified in 
adopting the pending measure. The Chinese have never lived 
for one year or even one month by the terms of the treaty. A 
treaty, I repeat, which is interminable, so far as its own lan- 
guage is involved, must be terminated if either party desires 
its termination, by just such action as this bill proposes. 

The question of form being disposed of, the question of 
substance is whether on full consideration we shall devote that 
interesting and important section of the United States which 
borders on the Peaceful Sea to be the home and the refuge of 
our own people and our own blood, or whether we shall leave 
it open, not to the competition of other nations like ourselves, 
but to those who, degraded themselves, will inevitably degrade 
us. We have this day to choose whether we shall have for the 
Pacific coast the civilization of Christ or the civilization of 
Confucius. 



232 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 



[The day following the preceding speech Mr. Blaine delivered the following, 
in answer to a speech from Senator Eustis of Louisiana: — ] 

Mr. President, — I have heard nothing in the debate, — 
I believe I have listened to all of it, — that could possibly 
give the honorable senator from Louisiana a justification for 
sajdng that there was any defense made of outrages perpe- 
trated in California against the Chinese who are already there. 
I tliink the human race on all continents would join in execrat- 
ing any cruelty or injustice toward those foreigners who are 
in California in pursuance of treaty stipulations, and who are 
entitled to the protection of the law. Nor can the senator 
adduce from any thing that I said, nor do I think he can 
adduce from what any other senator has said, a shadow of plea 
in behalf of extending lenity toward those in the South who 
abuse the colored race. The senator from Louisiana forgets 
a great distinction in the matter. The colored race in Lou- 
isiana are differently related to us from the Chinese who have 
not yet left China. I beg the honorable senator to observe 
that this legislation is aimed at the Chinese who have not 
yet left China. I beg him further to observe that the great 
majority of the colored race in Louisiana had rights there when 
his own honored ancestry were still living in New England. The 
problem is wholly different. If birth, if nativity, if long settle- 
ment, if domicile, give any rights so far as Louisiana is con- 
cerned, the senator himself is but a carpet-bagger of the second 
generation, as compared with the negroes, who have been in 
Louisiana for eight generations. 

I do not deny that a race trouble springs from the situation 
and surroundings of the negro. I spoke of it freely yester- 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 233 

day. There is a trouble, but that trouble is not to be healed 
by the remedy which I understand the honorable senator from 
Louisiana to advocate, viz. : that National authority and the 
National protection shall be withdrawn, and that the negroes 
shall be given up to the government of what the senator from 
Louisiana calls the superior race. But I think the senator errs 
in speaking of the Anglo-Saxon as specially in conflict with 
the negro in Louisiana. He is better versed in the history 
of Louisiana than I, but I have heard that a vast deal of the 
trouble in Louisiana comes not from the Anglo-Saxon race, but 
from descendants of the Latin race ; and when he speaks of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, he probably applies the term to the 
race which, by numbers, has the least right to dominate in 
the State of Louisiana. 

Do not let us confuse the issue. Let me admit the honorable 
senator's argument to its full extent. Let me admit the race 
trouble of the South as strongly as he will paint it, and then I 
ask, with that before our eyes and imprinted on our history, to 
be dealt with in a future generation, whether we shall deliber- 
ately invite another race trouble of perhaps more serious char- 
acter? Do not let the senator from Louisiana confound all 
distinctions of justice and all rules of logic, by telling us that a 
negro whose ancestors have been here for nine generations is to 
be treated by the laws of the United States in the same manner 
as a Cooly who wants to ship to-day from Hong-Kong to our 
coast on the Pacific. As a nation we owe nothing to the Cooly. 
We owe much to the negro. I will here read a paragraph which 
can never be read too often : — 

"Yet, if God wills that the war continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with 
another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so 
still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether."* 

Nothing truer or more sublime in diction was ever pro- 
nounced from the days of the prophet Ezekiel to the death of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

I regret that I do not see the junior senator from Massachu- 
setts [Mr. Hoar] in his seat. When I was absent from the 



234 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Senate last uight, he made some remarks, from which I read the 
following : — 

"The argument of the senators from California, and of the junior 
senator from Maine, and the senator from Nevada, is the old argument of 
the slave-holder and the tyrant over and over again with wliich the ears 
of the American people have been deafened, and which they have over- 
thrown." 

I think here is another confounding of distinctions. I thought 
I was arguing for free labor against servile labor. The trouble 
in the South, in the evi\ of slavery, was an unequal and un- 
fair partition of land. There were vast estates on which the 
slaves worked; and yet in all the opulence of the wealthiest 
days of slavery, the largest plantations paled before the magnih- 
cent dukedoms of California on which Coolies are imported to 
labor. When the senator from Massachusetts says that I am 
using the language of the slave-holder, he is arguing in favor of 
these grants of ten, twenty, forty, sixty, seventy, eighty, one 
hundred thousand acres, larger than some of the German prin- 
cipalities, wrought and cultivated by Cooly labor, — labor con- 
tracted for before the consul signs the certificate at Hong-Kong, 
and delivered at San Francisco according to order from the deck 
of the steamer. Does he wish to place American free labor 
against that which is mere slave labor ? It is a slight confound- 
ing of distinctions which the honorable senator from Massa- 
chusetts has made. That is all. I would say more if he were 
in his seat. 

My colleague (Mr. Hamlin) certainly will not think I mean 
any thing except the utmost kindness to him when I refer to the 
votes that were given on this question, especially when I say 
again, as I said yesterday, that had I been here I should have 
voted with him. But in the record of the case, as read by the 
honorable senator from Massachusetts, something was left out. 
Pending the discussion of the naturalization question, the white 
amendment did come up, just as my' colleague states. At a 
later period of the same day, instead of merely striking the 
word " white " out of the naturalization laws, it came up in the 
form of an amendment to admit Africans to naturalization. 
For that, disembarrassed from all the considerations to which 
my colleague has referred, he voted. Then it was that Senator 



chinesp: immigration. 285 

Trumbull moved to include " or persons born in the Chinese 
Empire." On that question the vote was given of which I 
spoke yesterday. So that the question came just as palpably 
and as directly as it could come before the Senate, wliether or 
not we should admit the Chinaman to citizenship in the United 
States. I repeat, perhaps I re-repeat, that the effect of that 
vote must be regarded as a settlement against Chinese immi- 
gration to this country, on the simple ground that in a Re- 
public where suifrage is universal, we cannot permit a large 
immigration of people who are to be forbidden the elective 
franchise. 

I must not forget that my honorable colleague also referred 
to the fact, in speaking of this question as one of competi- 
tion in labor, that the same competition was made in labor- 
saving machinery. I beg to differ from him, for the history of 
labor-saving machinery from the beginning, and especially 
under the magnificent progress which h[is been made since the 
steam-engine was invented, has been continually to advance 
the rank, dignit}', and emolument of labor. The price of free 
labor and the pay for it has risen steadily in the world ac- 
cording to the development of the mechanical and scientific 
arts, by reason of the simple fact that if by an invention you 
decrease the number of laborers in one field, you increase the 
want and require the development of labor in another field. I 
point to an unbroken history of two and a half centuries, in 
which the most splendid development of the inventive talent 
of any age has been accompanied step by step with a steady 
advance in the wages of the laborer. I also point to the fact 
that nowhere on earth has free labor been brought in competi- 
tion with any form of servile labor, in which the free labor did 
not come down to the level of the servile labor. It has been 
tried against the African slave in the South ; it has been tried 
against the Peons in Mexico and Peru ; it has been tried against 
the Chinaman in California ; the universal result is the same. 
The lower strata pull down the upper. The upper never 
elevate the lower. 



236 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 



[Letter from Mr. Blaine answering certain objections.] 

United States Senate Chamber, 

Washington, D.C, Feb. 21, 1879. 

To THE Editor of the NE^Y-YoRK Tribune. 

The reflections of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison upon the 
senators who voted for the bill restricting' Chinese immiofration 
are made, I think, without the thorough examination which that 
gentleman usually brings to the discussion of public questions. 
Permit me, with plainness of speech, and yet with no abate- 
ment of my sincere resjDect for Mr. Garrison, to state the 
grounds on which I cast my vote for the measure. 

Up to Oct. 1, 1876, the records of tlie San Francisco custom- 
house show that 233,136 Chinese had arrived in this country 
and that 93,273 had returned to China. The immigration since 
has been large, and allowing for returns and deaths, the bes^- 
statistics I can procure show that about 109,000 Chinese are in 
California and from 20,000 to 25,000 in the adjacent States and 
Territories — in all 130,000 to 135,000 on the West coast. 

Of this large population fully nine-tenths are adult males. 
The women have not in all numbered over seven thousand, and, 
according to all accounts, they are impure and lewd far beyond 
the Anglo-Saxon conception of impurity and lewdness. One of 
the best-informed Californians I ever met, says that not one 
score of decent and pure women could ever have been found in 
the whole Chinese immigration. It is only in the imagined, 
rather I hope the unimagined, feculence and foulness of Sodom 
and Gomorrah that any parallel can be found to the atrocious 
nastiness of the Chinese quarter of San Francisco. I speak of 
this from abounding testimony — largely from those who have 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 237 

had personal opportunity to study the subject in its revolting 
details. In the entire Chinese population of the Pacific coast 
scarcely one family is to be found ; no hearthstone of comfort, 
no fireside of joy ;• no father or mother, or brother or sister ; 
no child reared by parents ; no domestic and ennobling influ- 
ences ; no ties of affection. The relation of wife is degraded 
beyond all description, the females who hold and dishonor 
that sacred name being sold and transferred from one man to 
another, without shame and without fear ; one woman being at 
the same time the wife to several men. Many of these women 
came to San Francisco under written contracts for prostitution, 
openly entered into. I have myself read the translation of 
gome of these abominable documents. If as a nation we 
have the right to keep out infectious diseases, if we have 
the right to exclude the criminal classes, we surely possess 
the right to exclude that immigration which reeks with im- 
purity and which cannot come to us without plenteously sow- 
ing the seeds of moral and physical disease, of destitution, and 
of death. 

The Chinese immigration to California began with the Ameri- 
can immigration in 1848. The two races have been side by side 
for more than thirty years, nearly an entire generation, and not 
one step toward assimilation has been taken. The Chinese 
occupy their own peculiar quarter in the city, adhere to their 
own dress, speak their own language, worship in their own 
heathen temples, and inside the municipal law and independent 
of it, administer a code among themselves, even pronouncing 
the death penalty and executing it in criminal secrecy. If this 
were for a year only, or for two or five or even ten years, it 
might be claimed that more time is needed for domestication 
and assimilation ; but this has been going on for an entire gen- 
eration, and the Chinaman to-day approaches no nearer to our 
civilization than he did when the Golden Gate first received 
him. In sworn testimony before an investigating Committee 
of Congress, Dr. Mears, the health officer of San Francisco, 
(described as " a careful and learned man "), testified that the 
condition of the Chinese quarter is " horrible, inconceivably 
horrible ! " He stated that the Chinese as a rule "live in large 
tenement-houses, large numbers crowded into individual rooms. 



238 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

without proper ventilation, with bad drainage, and underground, 
with a great deal of filth, the odors from which are horrible." 
He described their " mode of taking a room ten feet high and 
putting a flooring half way to the ceiling, both floors being 
crowded at night with sleej^ers. In these crowded dens cases 
of small-pox were concealed from the police." " They live 
underground in bunks. The topography of that portion of 
Chinadom is such that you enter a house sometimes and think 
that it is a one-story house and you will find two or three stories 
down below on the side of the hill, where they live in great 
filth." 

Another close and accurate observer, long a resident of 
California, says " the only wonder is that desolating pestilences 
have not ensued. Small-pox has often been epidemic, and could 
always be traced to Chinese origin. The Chinese quarter was 
once occupied by shops, churches, and dwellings of Americans. 
Now these are as thoroughly Mongolian as any part of Canton. 
All other races flee from the contact." Dr. Mears further testi- 
fied and gave many revolting details in proof that the Chinese 
" are cruel and indifferent to their sick." He described cases of 
Chinese lepers at the city hospital : " Their feet dropped off by 
dry gangrene and their hands were wasted and attenuated. 
Their finger-nails dropped off." He said " the Chinese were 
gradually working Eastward and would by and by crowd into 
Eastern cities, where the conditions under which they live in 
San Francisco would produce in the absence of its climatic ad- 
vantages, destructive pestilences." Perhaps a Chinese quarter 
in Boston, with forty thousand Mongolians located somewhere 
between the south end and the north end of the city and sepa- 
rating the two, would give Mr. Garrison some new views as to 
the power and right of a nation to exclude moral and physical 
pestilence from its borders. In San Francisco there is no hot 
weather, the thermometer rarely rising above sixty -five degrees. 
One of the most intelligent physicians in the United States says 
that the Chinese quarter of San Francisco transferred to St. 
Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, or any Eastern city would in a hot 
summer breed a plague equal to the "black death" that has so 
often alarmed the civilized world. When Mr. Garrison says the 
immigration of Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Frenchmen, 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 289 

Germans, and Scandinavians must be put on the same footing 
as the Chinese coolies, he confounds all distinctions, and, of 
course, without intending it, libels almost the entire white 
population whose blood is inherited from the races he names. 
All the immigration from Europe to-day assimilates at once with 
its own blood on this soil, and to place the Chinese coolies on 
the same footing is to shut one's eyes to all the instincts of 
human nature and all the teachings of history. 

Is it not inevitable that a class of men living in this degraded 
and filthy condition, and on the poorest of food, can work for 
less than the American laborer is entitled to receive for his 
daily toil ? Put the two classes of labor side by side and the 
cheap servile labor pulls down the more manly toil to its level. 
The free white laborer never could compete with the slave labor 
of the South. In the Chinaman the white laborer finds only 
another form of servile competition — in some aspects more 
revolting and corrupting than African slavery. Whoever con- 
tends for the unrestricted immigration of Chinese coolies con- 
tends for that system of toil which blights the prospects of the 
white laborer — dooming him to starvation wages, killing his 
ambition b}^ rendering his struggle hopeless, and ending in a 
plodding and pitiable poverty. Nor is it a truthful answer 
to say that this danger is remote. Remote it may be for Mr. 
Garrison, for the city of Boston, and for New England, but it 
is instant and pressing on the Pacific Slope. The late Caleb 
Gushing, who had carefully studied the Chinese question ever 
since his mission to Peking in 1842, maintained that unless 
resisted by the United States the first general famine in China 
would be followed by an immigration to California that would 
swamp the white race on the Pacific Slope. I observe that a 
New England newspaper — I especially regret that such igno- 
rance should be shown in New England — says it is only " a 
strip " on the Pacific that the Chinaman seeks for a home. The 
Chinese are already scattered over three States and two adjacent 
Territories whose area is larger than the original thirteen colo- 
nies. California alone is larger than New England, New York, 
Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and is capable of maintaining a vast 
population of Anglo-Saxon freemen if we do not surrender it to 
Chinese coolies. 



240 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Before the same Committee of Investigation from whose 
report I have already quoted, Mr. T. W. Jackson, a man of 
high character, who had traveled extensively in the East, testi- 
fied that his strong belief was "that if the Chinese felt that 
they were safe and had a firm footing in California they would 
come in enormous numbers, because the population of China is 
practically inexhaustible." Such, indeed, is the unbroken testi- 
mony of all who are entitled to express an opinion. The 
decision of Congress on this matter therefore becomes of the 
very last importance. Had it been in favor of Chinese immi- 
gration, with the encouragement which such a decision would 
have implied, it requires no vivid imagination to foresee that 
the great slope between the Sierras and the Pacific would 
become the emigrating ground for the Chinese Empire. I do 
not exaggerate therefore when I say that on the adoption 
or rejection of the policy passed upon by Congress, hangs the 
fate of the Pacific Slope — whether its labor shall be that of 
American freemen or servile Mongolians. If Mr. Garrison 
thinks the interests of his own countrymen, his own Govern- 
ment, and, in a still larger sense, the interests of humanity and 
civilization will be promoted by giving up the Pacific Coast to 
Mongolian labor, I beg respectfully but firmly to differ from- 
him. There is no ground on which we are bound to receive 
them to our own detriment. Charity is the first of Christian 
graces. But Mr. Garrison would not feel obliged to receive 
into his family a person that would physically contaminate or 
morally corrupt his children. As with a family so with a 
nation : the same instinct of self-preservation exists, the same 
right to prefer the interest of our own people, the same duty 
to exclude that which is corrupting and dangerous to the 
Republic ! 

The outcry that we are violating our treaty obligations is 
without foundation. The article on emigration in the treaty 
has not been observed by China for a single hoiu' since it was 
made. All the testimony taken on the subject — and it has 
been full and direct — shows conclusively that the entire emi- 
gration was " under contract ; " that the coolies had been 
gathered together for export and gathered as agents in our 
Western States would gather live-stock for shipment. A very 



CHINESE IMMIGRATIOX. 241 

competent witness in California,, speaking to this point, says 
that — 

" On the arrival of the Chinese in California they are consigned like hogs 
to the different Chinese companies, their contracts are vise'd, and the cooly 
commences to pay to the companies fees to insure care if he is taken sick 
and his return home dead or alive. His return is prevented until after his 
contract has been entirely fulfilled. If he breaks his contract the spies of 
the six companies hunt him to prevent his returning to China by arrange- 
ments with the steamship company or their agents in the steamship employ 
to prevent his getting a ticket. The agents of the steamship companies 
testified to this same fact. If a ticket is obtained for him by others he is 
forcibly stopped on the day of sailing by the employes of tlie six companies, 
called 'high-binders,' who can always be seen guarding the coolies." 

Mr. Joseph J. Raj, a Philadelphia merchant, long resident 
in China, and a close observer of its emigration, says " that 
iVo'o ^^ ^^^® Chinese who have reached our shores were not free 
agents in their coming. E^'iles of the Hong-Kong newspapers 
from 18B1 would supply information regarding the 'barra- 
coons ' at that port, and when the system had become too 
great a scandal, their removal to Macao (a Portuguese colony, 
forty miles distant), in which 'barracoons,' the Chinese, in 
every sense prisoners, were retained until their shipment to 
San Francisco, Callao, Havana, and other ports. These, called 
by courtesy immigrants, were collected from within a radius of 
two or three hundred miles from Canton, and consisted of the 
abjectly poor, who, willingly or not, were sold to obtain food 
for their families, or for gambling debts (the Chinese, as you 
are aware, being inveterate gamblers), or the scapegraces of the 
country fleeing to avoid punishment." 

It is of course a mere misuse of terms to call this an " en- 
tirely voluntary emigration," and yet none other was permissi- 
ble under the Burlingame Treaty. Our Government would be 
clearly justified in disregarding the treaty on the single ground 
that the Chinese Government had never respected its provis- 
ions. But without reference to that, our Government pos- 
sesses the right to abrogate the treaty if it adjudges that its 
continuance is "pernicious to the State." Indeed, the two 
pending propositions in the Senate differ not in regard to our 
own right to abrogate the treaty, but simply as to whether we 
should do it in July, 1879, by the exercise of our power with- 
out further notice to China, or whether we should do it in 



242 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

January, 1880, after notifying China tliat we had made up our 
minds to do it. Nearly a year ago Congress by joint resolution 
expressed its discontent with the existing treaty, and thus 
clearl3'gavc notice to the civilized world, — if notice were need- 
ful, — of the desire and intention of our people. Tn the late 
action of Congress the opposing proposition — moved as a sub- 
stitute for the bill to which I gave my support — requested the 
President to notify the Emperor of China that Chinese immi- 
gration is " unsatisfactory and pernicious," and in effect if he 
would not modify the treaty as we desired, then the President 
should notify the Emperor that after Jan. 1, 1880, the United 
States will "treat the obnoxious stipulations as at an end." 
Both propositions — the bill that Ave passed and the substitute 
that we rejected — assumed alike the full right to abrogate the 
treaty. Whether it were better to abrogate it after last year's 
joint resolution, or to inform the Emperor of China directly 
that if he will not consent to the change " we shall make 
it anyhow," must be relegated for decision to the schools of 
taste and etiquette. The first proposition resting on our clear 
Constitutional power seems to me a better mode of proceed- 
ing than to ask the Emperor of China to consent to a modi- 
fication and inform him at the same time that, whether he 
consents or not, we shall on next New Year's Day treat " the 
obnoxious stipulations as at end." As to the power of Con- 
gress to do just what has been done no one will entertain a 
doubt who examines the whole question. An admirable sum- 
mary of the right and power is found in an opinion delivered 
by that eminent jurist, Benjamin R. Curtis, when he was a 
judge of the United States Supreme Court. Judge Curtis 
said : — 

"It cannot be admitted that the only method of escape from a treaty is 
by tlie consent of the other party to it or a dechiration of var. To refnse 
to execnte a treaty for reasons which approve themselves to the conscien- 
tious judgment of a nation is a matter of the utmost gravity; but the jnncer 
to do so is a prcrof/alice of wJdch no nation can he deprived icithoid deeply affect- 
in;! its independence. That the people of the United States have deprived 
tlieir Government of this power I do not believe. Tliat it must reside some- 
where, and be applicable to all cases, I am couviuccd, and I feel no doubt that 
it belongs to Congress." 

A great deal has been said about the danger to our trade if 
China should resort to some form of retaliation. The natural 



CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 243 

and pertinent retaliation is to restrict American immigration 
to China. Against that we will enter no protest, and should 
have no right to do so. The talk about China closing her ports 
to our trade is made only by those who do not understand the 
question. Last year the total amount of our exports to all 
Chinese ports outside of Hong-Kong was but $692,000. I have 
called Hong-Kong a Chinese port, but every one knows that 
it is under British control, and if we were at war with China 
to-day Hong-Kong would be as open to us as Liverpool. To 
speak of China punishing us by suspending trade is only the 
suggestion of ignorance. We pay China a large balance in 
coin, and probably we always shall do it. But if the trade 
question had the importance which some have erroneously 
attributed to it, I would not seek its continuance by permit- 
ting a vicious immigration of Chinese coolies. The Bristol 
merchants cried out that commerce would be ruined if Eng- 
land persisted in destroying the slave trade. But England did 
not sacrifice her honor by yielding to the cry. 

The enlightened religious sentiment of the Pacific coast 
views with profound alarm the tendency and effect of unre- 
stricted Chinese immigration. The " pastors and delegates of 
the Congregational churches of California" a year since ex- 
pressed their " conviction " that " the Burlingame treaty ought 
to be so modified hij the Creneral Government as to restrict 
Chinese immigration." Rev. S. V. Blakeslee, editor of the 
oldest religious paper on the Pacific coast, spoke thus in an 
official address : — 

"Moreover, wealthy English and American companies have organized 
great money-making plans ior bringing millions — it is trne — even millions 
— of tliese Chinese into our State, and into all parts of the Union; and 
they have sent out emissaries into China to induce the people, by every true 
and false storj', to migrate here. Already (wo hundred and fifhj thousand 
have come, of whom one hundred thousand remain. 

"The tendency of all this is tremendously toward evil; toward vice and 
abomination; toward all opposed to the true spirit of Americanism, and is 
very dangerous to our morality, to our stability, and to our success as a 
people and a nation. INIillions more of these Chinese must come if not 
prevented by any legal, or moral, or mobocratic I'estraint, increasing in- 
calculably by numbers the evils already existing; while a spirit of race 
prejudices and clanship jealousies and a conflict of interests must be devel- 
oped, portending possible evil beyond all description." 



244 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

In regard to the process of converting and Christianizing 
this people, a missionary who has been in the field since 1849, 
testifies that not one in a thousand has even nominally pro- 
fessed a change from heathenism, and that of this small number 
nearly one-half has been taught in missionary schools in China. 
The same missionary says, " as they come in still larger num- 
bers they will more effectually support each other in their 
national peculiarities and vices, become still more confirmed in 
heathen immoralities, with an influence in every respect in- 
calculably bad." Under Avhat possible sense of duty any Ameri- 
can can feel that he promotes Christianity by the })rocess of 
handing California over to heathenism, is more than I am able 
to discover. 

This question connects itself intimately and inseparably with 
the labor question. Immigration of the Chinese is encour- 
aged by some openly, by many secretly, because their labor 
is cheap. The experiment is a most dangerous one. In a 
Republic where the man who works carries a ballot in his 
hands, it will not do for capitalized wealth to legislate for cheap 
labor. We do not want cheap labor : we do not want dear 
labor. We want labor at fair rates, — at rates that shall give 
the laborer his fair share, and capital its fair share. If more 
is sought by capital, less will in the end be realized. There is 
not a laboring-man from the Penobscot to the Sacramento who 
would not feel aggrieved, outraged, burdened, crushed, by be- 
ing forced into competition with the labor and the wages of the 
Cliinese cooly. For one, I will never consent by my vote or 
my voice to drive the intelligent workingmen of America to 
that competition and that degradation. Mr. Garrison spent 
the best years of an honored life in a courageous battle for the 
freedom and dignity of labor, and for its emancipation from 
thraldom. I trust he will not lessen the gratitude which the 
workhigmen of America owe him for his noble lead in the past 
by an effort now to consign them to the humiliation and the 
poverty inevitably resulting from the competition of Chinese 
coolies. 

Years ago, Mr. Carlyle said to an American friend, "You will 
have no trouble in your country so long as you have few people 
and much land; but when you have much people and little 



chinj:se immigration. 245 

land, your trials will begin."' No one connected in any manner 
with the government of the Republic can view the situation 
without grave concern. At least nine large States of the South 
are disturbed by a race trouble, of which no man is yet wise 
enough to see the end ; the central and largest and wealthiest 
of our Territories is seized by a polygamous population which 
flaunts defiance in the face of the General Government: dis- 
content among unemployed thousands has already manifested 
a spirit of violence, and but recently arrested travel between 
the Atlantic and the Mississippi by armed mobs which defied 
three States and commanded great trunk-lines of railway to 
■cease operations. Practical statesmanship would suggest that 
the Government of the United States should avoid the increase 
of race troubles, and that nothing but sheer recklessness will 
force upon the American population of the Pacific slope the 
odious contamination of the lowest grade of the Chinese race. 
It may be attem})ted ; but, in my judgment, it will lead to 
direful results, in which violence and murders and massacres 
will be terribly frequent. Let it be proclaimed here and now 
that the General Government will maintain unrestricted immi- 
gration of Chinese coolies, and in less than five years a larger 
military force than the existing Army of the United States 
will be required to keep peace on the Pacific slope. I feel 
that I am pleading the cause of the free American laborer, 
and of his children and of his children's children — the cause 
in short of " the house against the hovel ; of the comforts of 
the freeman against the squalor of the slave.*' 



246 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



FALSE ISSUE RAISED BY THE DEMOCRATIC 

PARTY. 



[On tlie 25tli of February, 1865, Congress, largely Republican in botb branches, 
enacted the following Law which was approved by President Lincoln. 

" No military or naval officer, or other person engaged in the civil, military or 
naval service of the United States, shall order, bring, keep or have under his 
authority or control, any troops or armed men at the place where a*ny general or 
special election is held in any State, unless it be necessary to repel the armed 
enemies of the United States, or to keep the peace at the polish Since the 
revision of the United States Statutes this law has been known as Section 2002. 

Under this power " to keep the peace at the polls " Southern elections during 
the reconstruction period were fairly regular and honest. The Democratic party 
made the repeal of the law an issue and agitated it for years, creating the popu- 
lar impression that the Kepublican National Administration kept large bodies 
of troops in the South to control elections. In the Forty-sixth Congress botb 
Senate and House Avere under the control of the Democratic party. The part 
of the law offensive to the Democratic party was contained in the closing words 
which are Italicized above. Instead of striking those words out, the Democratic 
caucus of Senators and Eepresentatives resolved to re-enact Section 2002 word 
for word with the exception of the Italicized words at the end. The caucus also 
determined to put the amendment on the Army Appropriation Bill and to make 
the passage of the Bill dependent on the President's approving it with the 
Amendment. Mr. Blaine delivered the following speech on the bill in the 
Senate of the United States on the 14th of April, 1879.] 

Mil. President, — The existing section of the Revised 
Statutes numbered 2002 reads thus : — 

" No military or naval officer, or other person engaged in tlie civil, military 
or naval service of the United States, shall order, bi-ing, keep or have under 
his authoiuty or control, any troops or armed men at the place where any 
general or special election is held in any State, unless it be necessary to- 
repel the armed enemies of the United States, or to keep the peace at the polls." 

The object of the proposed section, which has just been read 
at the clerk's desk, is to get rid of the eight closing words, 
namely, " or to keep the peace at the polls." The mode of 
legislation proposed in the army bill now before the Senate is 



FALSE ISSUE RAISED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 247 

therefore an unusual mode. It is an extraordinary mode. If it 
be desired to repeal a single sentence at the end of a section in 
the Revised Statutes the ordinary way is to strike off those 
words, but the mode chosen in this bill is to rejDeat and re-enact 
the whole section, leaving those few words out. While I do not 
wish to be needlessly suspicious on a small point, I am quite 
persuaded that this did not happen by accident. It came by 
design. If I may so speak, it came of cunning, the intent 
being to create the impression that the Republicans in the 
administration of the General Government had been using 
troops right and left, hither and thither, in every direction, 
and that the Democrats as soon as they came into power 
enacted this section. I can imagine Democratic candidates for 
Congress in the next campaign all over the country reading 
this section to gaping audiences as one of the first offsprings 
of Democratic reform, v\^hereas every word of it, every syllable 
of it, from its first to its last, is the enactment of a Republican 
Congress. 

I repeat that this unusual form presents a dishonest issue, 
whether so intended or not. It aims to make it appear that as 
soon as the Democrats got possession of the Federal Govern- 
ment they proceeded to enact the clause which is thus expressed. 
The law was passed by a Republican Congress in February, 
1865. There were forty-six senators sitting in this Chamber 
at the time, of whom only ten or at most eleven were Demo- 
crats. The House of Representatives was overwhelmingly 
Republican. We w^ere in the midst of a war. The Repuljli- 
can administration had a million or possibly twelve hundred 
thousand bayonets at its command. Thus situated, with the 
amplest possible power to interfere Avith elections had they 
so designed, with soldiers in every hamlet and county of the 
United States, the Republican party themselves placed that 
provision on the statute-book, and Abraham Lincoln sisrned it. 

I beg you to observe, Mr. President, that this is the first 
instance in the legislation of the United States in which any 
restrictive provision whatever was enacted in regard to the use 
of troops at the polls. The Republican party did it with the 
Senate and the House in their control. Abraham Lincoln signed 
it when he was Commander-in-Chief of an army larger than 



248 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

ever Napoleon Bona})arte had at his command. So much by- 
way of correcting an ingenious and studied attempt at mis- 
representation. 

The alleged object is to strike out the few words tliat author- 
ize tlie use of troops " to keep peace at the polls." This country 
has been alarmed, perhaps I would better say amused, at the 
great effort made to create an impression that the Republican 
party relies for its popular strength upon the use of the bayonet. 
This Democratic Congress has attempted to give a bad name to 
this country throughout the civilized world, and to give it on a 
false issue — false in whole and in detail, false in the charge, 
false in all the specifications. The impression sought to be 
created, as I say, not only throughout the North American 
Continent but in Europe to-day, is that elections, at least in the 
Southern States of the Union, are controlled by the bayonet. 

I denounce it here as a false issue. I am not at liberty to 
say that any gentleman making the issue knows it to be false. 
I trust he does not. But I shall prove to him that it is false, 
and that it has not a solitary inch of solid ground to rest upon. 
I have in my hand an official transcript of the location and the 
number of all the troops of the United States east of Omaha. 
By " east of Omaha," I mean all the United States east of the 
Mississippi River together with the belt of States that border 
the Mississippi River on the west. They include forty-one 
millions at least of the forty-five millions of people that this 
country is supposed to contain to-day. In that magnificent 
area, I will not pretend to state its extent, but with forty-one 
million people, I know officially the exact number of troops. 
Would any senator on the opposite side hazard a guess as to 
that number? Would he like to state how many men with 
muskets in their hands there are in the vast area I have 
named ? Let me tell him ! There are two thousand seven 
hundred and ninety-seven ! Not one more. 

From the headwaters of the Mississippi River to tlie lakes, 
and down the great chain of lakes, and down the St. Lawrence, 
and down the valley of the St. John, and down the St. Croix, 
striking the Atlantic Ocean and following it down to Key 
West, around the Gulf, to the mouth of the Mississippi again, a 
frontier of eight thousand miles either bordering on the ocean 



FALSE ISSUE RAISED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 249 

or upon foreign territory is guarded by these 2,797 troops. 
Witliin this domain forty-five fortifications are manned and 
eleven arsenals protected. There are sixty troops to every 
million of people. In the South I have the entire number in 
each State and will give it. 

I believe the senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] lias been 
alarmed, greatly alarmed, about the overriding of the popular 
ballot by troops of the United States ! In Delaware there is 
not a single armed man, not one. The United States has not 
even one soldier in the State ! 

The honorable senator from West Virginia [Mr. Hereford] 
on Friday last lashed himself into a passion, or at least into a 
perspiration, over the wrongs of his State, trodden down as he 
pictured it by the iron heel of military desi^otism. There is 
not a soldier of the United States, not one on the soil of West 
Virginia, and there has not been one for years. 

I do not know whether my esteemed friend from Maryland 
[Mr. Whyte] has been greatly disturbed or not ; but at Fort 
McHenry, guarding the entrance to the beautiful harbor of his 
beautiful city of Baltimore, there are one hundred and ninety- 
two artillery-men and not another soldier on the soil of his 
State from the Chesapeake to the crest of the AUeghenies. 

In Virginia there is a school of jDractice at Fortress Monroe. 
My honorable friend who has charge of this bill [Mr. Withers] 
knows very well, and if he does not I will tell him, that outside 
of that school of artillery practice at Fortress Monroe, which 
has two hundred and eighty-two men, there is not a Federal 
soldier on the soil of Virginia — not one. 

Are the senators from North Carolina frightened by the im- 
mediate and terrible prospect of being overrun by the Army of 
the United States? On the whole soil of North Carolina there 
are but thirty soldiers and they are guarding a fort at the mouth 
of Cape Fear River — just thirty. 

I do not see a senator on the floor from South Carolina. 
There are one hundred and twenty artillery-men guarding the 
approaches to Charleston Harbor — not another soldier on the 
soil of that State. 

Does my gallant friend from Georgia [Mr. Gordon], who 
knows better than I the force and strength of military organi- 



250 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

zation, does he the senior senator, and does the jnnior also [Mr. 
Benjamin H. Hill] — does cither of those senators feel alarm at 
the presence of twenty-nine Federal soldiers in Georgia? — 
There are just twenty-nine there — not one more ! And they 
are guarding the entrance to the harbor of Savannah. 

Florida has one hundred and eighty-two at three separate 
posts, principally guarding the navy yard at Pensacola near 
which my friend on the opposite side [j\Ir. Jones] lives. 

Is the honorable senator from Tennessee [Mr. Bailey] op- 
pressed with fear at the progress of military despotism in liis 
State? There is not a single Federal soldier on the soil of 
Tennessee, — not one. 

I see both the honorable senators from Kentucky here. They 
have equal cause with Tennessee to be alarmed, for there is not 
a Federal soldier in Kentucky — not one ! 

In Missouri there are a half-dozen guarding some arsenal 
stores I 

There are fifty-seven soldiers in Arkansas, on the borders of 
the Indian Territory. 

I think my friend from Alabama [Mr. Morgan] is greatly 
excited over this question, and in his State there are thirty-two 
Federal soldiers, located at an arsenal of the United States. 

The State of Mississippi, that is in danger of being trodden 
under the iron hoof of military power, has not a Federal soldier 
on its soil. 

Louisiana has tAvo hundred and thirty-nine guarding ap- 
proaches from the sea. 

Texas, apart from the regiments that guard the frontier on 
the Rio Grande and the Indian frontier, has not one. 

The entire South has eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers to 
intimidate, overrun, oppress, and destroy the liberties of fifteen 
million people, and rob them of freedom at the polls ! In the 
Southern States there are twelve hundred and three counties. 
If you distribute the soldiers by counties there is not quite one 
for each county ; and when I give the counties I give them from 
the census of 1870. If you distribute these soldiers territorially 
there is one for every seven hundred square miles, so that if 
you make a territorial distribution, I would remind the honor- 
able senator from Delaware, that the quota for his State would 



FALSE ISSUE RAISED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 261 

be three — " one ragged sergeant and two abreast," as the old 
song has it. That is the formidable force ready to descend 
upon Dehiware and destroy the liberties of the State. 

Mv. President, the old tradition has it, that the soothsayers 
of Rome could not look one another in the face without 
smiling. There are not two Democratic senators on this floor 
who can go into the cloak-room and look each other in the 
face without smiling at this talk, or, more appropriately, I 
should say without blushing — the whole thing is such a pro- 
digious and absolute farce, such a miserably manufactured false 
issue, such a pretense without the slightest foundation in the 
world, and talked about most and denounced the loudest in 
States that have not now and have not for years had a single 
Federal soldier within their boundaries. In New England we 
have three hundred and eighty soldiers. Throughout the South 
it does not run quite seventy to the million people. In New 
England we have absolutely one hundred and twenty soldiers 
to the million. New England is far more overrun to-day by 
the Federal soldiery, far more, than is the whole South. I 
never heard any one complain about it in New England, or 
express any great fear of his liberties being endangered by the 
presence of a handful of Federal troops. 

As I have said, the tendency of this talk is to give us a bad 
name in Europe. Republican institutions are looked upon 
there with jealousy. Every misrepresentiition, every slander is 
exaggerated and talked about to our discredit, and the Demo- 
cratic party of the country to-day stand indicted, and I here 
indict them, for public slander of their country, creating the 
impression in the civilized world that we are governed by a 
military despotism. How amazing it would be to any man in 
Europe, familiar as Europeans are with great armies, if he 
were told that in a territory larger than France and Spain and 
Portugal and Great Britain and Holland and Belgium and 
the German Empire all combined, there are but eleven hun- 
dred and fifty-five soldiers ! That this mad cry, this false issue, 
this absurd talk is based upon the presence of eleven hundred 
and fifty-five soldiers on eight hundred and fifty thousand 
square miles of territory ! The whole number of soldiers thus 
complained of • is not double the number of the Democratic 



252 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

police in the city of Biiltinujre, or in the city of New Orleans, 
not a third of the police in the city of New York. I repeat, 
the number indicts the Democracy ; it shows the whole charge 
to be without foundation ; it derides the issue as a false, scan- 
dalous and partisan makeshift. 

What then is the real motive underlying this movement? 
Senators on that side, Democratic orators on the stump cannot 
make any sensible set of men at the cross-roads believe that 
there is danger in eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers dis- 
tributed over the South, one to each county. The moment 
you state it, everybody sees its palpable and laughable absurd- 
it}^ and therefore we must go farther and find a motive for 
all this cry. It is not the troops ; that is evident. There are 
more troops by fifty per cent scattered through the Northern 
States east of the Mississippi to-day than through the Southern 
States east of the Mississippi, and yet nobody in the North 
speaks of it ; anybody would be laughed at for speaking of it ; 
and therefore the issue on the troops, being a false one, con- 
ceals the true issue, which is simply to get rid of the Federal 
presence at Federal elections, to get rid of the civil power of 
the United States in the election of representatives to the 
Congress of the United States. That is the whole of it ; and 
disguise it as you may there is nothing else in it or of it. 

The Democratic party simply wishes to get rid of the super- 
vision by the Federal Government of the election of repre- 
sentatives to Congress through civil means ; and therefore this 
bill connects itself directly with another bill, and you cannot 
discuss this military bill without discussing a bill which was 
before us last winter, known as the legislative, executive, and 
judicial appropriation bill. I am well aware that it is not 
permissible for me to discuss a bill that is pending before the 
other House. I am aware that propriety and parliamentary 
rule forbid that I should speak of what is done in the House 
of Representatives ; but I know very well that I am not for- 
bidden to speak of that which is not done in the House of 
Representatives. I am therefore perfectly free to declare that 
neither this military bill nor the legislative, executive, and 
judicial appropriation bill ever emanated from any committee 
of the House of Representatives ; they are not the work of any 



FALSE ISSUE RAISED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 253 

committee of the House of Kepresentatives, and, although the 
present House of Reijresentatives is almost evenly balanced in 
party division, no solitary suggestion has been allowed to come 
from the minority of that House in regard to the shaping of 
these bills. Where do they come from? We are not left to 
infer ; we are not even left to the Yankee privilege of guessing, 
because we know. The senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] 
obligingly told us — I have his exact words here — " that the 
honorable senator from Ohio [Mr. Thurman] was the chairman 
of a committee appointed by the Democratic party to see how it 
was best to present all these questions before us." Therefore 
when I discuss these two bills together I am violating no par- 
liamentary law, I am discussing the offsiuing and the creation 
of the Democratic caucus of which the senator from Ohio is 
the chairman. 

We are told, too, a rather novel thing, that if we do not 
take these laws, we are not to have the apjiropriations. I be- 
lieve it has been announced in both branches of Congress, I 
suppose on the authority of the Democratic caucus, that if we 
do not take these bills as they are planned, we shall not have 
any of the appropriations that go with them. The honorable 
senator from West Virginia [Mr. Hereford] avowed it on Fri- 
day ; the honorable senator from Ohio [Mr. Thurman] avoAved 
it last session ; the honorable senator from Kentucky [Mr. 
Beck] avowed it at the same time, and I am not permitted 
to speak of the legions who proclaimed it in the other House. 
They say all these appropriations are to be refused — not merely 
the Army appropriation, for they do not stop at that. Look 
for a moment at the legislative bill that came from the Demo- 
cratic caucus. Here is an appropriation in it for defraying the 
expenses of the Supreme Court and the Circuit and District 
Courts of the United States, including the District of Columbia, 
" $2,800,000 : " " Provided " — provided what ? 

" That the following sections of the Revised Statutes relating to elec- 
tions [going on to recite them] be repealed." 

That is, you will pass an approimation for the support of 
the Judiciary of the United States only on condition that 
something else, entirely disconnected from the Judiciary be 



254 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

repealed. We often S2:)eak of this Government being divided 
into three great departments, the Executive, the Legishitive, 
and the Judicial — co-ordinate, independent, equal! The Legis- 
lative, under the control of a Democratic caucus, now steps for- 
ward and says, "We offer to the Executive this bill, and if he 
does not sign it, we are determined to starve the Judiciary." 
That is carrying the thing somewhat farther than I have ever 
known to be attempted. You do not merely propose to starve 
the Executive if he will not sign the bill, but you propose to 
starve the Judiciary that has had nothing whatever to do with 
the question. This has been boldly avowed here ; this has 
been boldly avowed on the floor of the other House ; this 
has been boldly avowed in Democratic papers throughout the 
whole country. 

You propose not merely to starve the Judiciary but you 
declare that you will not appropriate a solitary dollar to take 
care of this Capitol. The men who take care of all this public 
property are provided for in the same bill. You say they shall 
not have a dollar of pay if the President will not agree to 
•change the ele'ction laws. 

There is the public printing that goes on for the enlighten- 
ment of the whole country, and for printing the public docu- 
ments of every one of the Departments. You say they shall 
not have a dollar for public printing unless the President agrees 
to repeal these laws which regulate the election of rejiresenta- 
tives in Congress. 

There is the Congressional Library that has become the pride 
■of the whole American people for its magnificent growth and 
■extent! You say it shall not have one dollar for its daily 
•care, much less to add a new book, unless the President signs 
these bills. 

There is the Department of State which has been our pride 
throughout the history of the Government for the ability with 
wliich it has conducted our foreign affairs. It is also to 
be starved. You say we shall not have any intercourse with 
foreign nations, not a dollar ahall be appropriated for ministers 
or consuls unless the President signs these bills. 

There is the Lighthouse Board that provides for the beacons 
and the warnings on seventeen thousand miles of sea and gulf 



FALSE ISSUE RAISED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 255 

and lake coast. You say those lights shall all go out, and not 
a dollar shall be appropriated for the Board if the President 
does not sign these bills, which a Democratic caucus has agreed 
upon, and demands that everybody else shall assent to. 

There are the mints of the United States at Philadelphia, 
New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco, coining silver and coin- 
ing gold. You declare not a dollar shall be appropriated for 
them if the President does not sign these bills. 

There is the Patent Office, the patents issued which embody 
tlie invention of the country — not a dollar for them. The 
Pension Bureau shall cease its operations unless these bills are 
signed, and patriotic soldiers may starve. The Agricultural 
Bureau, the Post-Office Department, every one of the great 
executive functions of the Government is threatened, taken by 
the throat, highwayman style, commanded to stand and deliver 
in the name of the Democratic Congressional caucus. No com- 
mittee of this Congress in either branch has ever recommended 
this legislation — not one. Simply a Democratic caucus has 
done it. 

Of course this is new. We are learning something every 
day. I think you may search the records of the Federal Gov- 
■ernment in vain ; it will take some one much more industrious 
in that search than I have ever been, and much more observant 
than I have ever been, to find any possible parallel or any 
possible suggestion in our history of such a thing. Many 
■of the senators who sit in this Chamber can remember some 
•extraordinary vetoes. The veto of the National Bank Bill by 
President Jackson in 1832, remembered by the oldest in this 
Chamber ; the veto of the National Bank Bill in 1841 by 
President Tyler, remembered by those not the oldest, aroused a 
political excitement which up to that time had no parallel ; and 
it was believed, whether rightfully or wrongfully is no matter, it 
was believed b}^ those who advocated those financial measures 
at the time, that they were of the very first and the very last 
importance to the well-being and prosperity of the people of the 
Union. It was so believed by men who were the great and 
shining lights of that day. It was so believed by that man of 
imperial character and imperious will, the illustrious senator 
from Kentucky. It was so believed by representative Whigs in 



256 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

both branches of Congress. When Jackson vetoed the one, or 
Tyler vetoed the other, was tliere a suggestion that those bank 
charters should be put on appropriation bills, and that there 
siiouhl not be a dollar to sujjport the Government until they 
were signed ? So far from it that, in 1841, when temper Avas at 
its height, when the Whig party, in addition to losing their great 
measure, lost it under the sting and the irritation of what they 
believed was a desertion by the President whom they had chosen, 
and Avlien INIr. Clay, goaded by all these considerations, rose to 
debate the question in the Senate, he repelled with anger the 
suggestion of Mr. William C. Rives of Virginia, who attempted 
to make upon him the point that he had indulged in some threat 
involving the independence of the Executive. Mr. Clay's re- 
sponse may be recalled and read here with jDrofit to every one : — 

"I said nothing- whatever of any obligation on the part of the President 
to conform his judgment to the opinions of the Senate and the House of 
Representatives, although the senator argued as if I had, and persevered 
in so arguing after repeated correction. I said no such tiling. I know and 
I respect the perfect independence of each department, acting within its 
proper sphere, of the other departments." 

A leading Democrat from the South, a man who has courage 
and frankness and many good qualities, has boasted publicly 
that the Democracy are in power for the first time in eighteen 
years, and they do not intend to stop until they have wiped 
out every vestige of every war measure. "Forewarned is 
fore-armed," and you begin appropriately on a measure that 
has the signature of Abraham Lincoln. It is significant to 
hear these words from a man who was then in arms against 
the Government of the United States, doing his best to destroy 
it, exerting all his power in a bloody and terrible rebellion 
against the authority of the United States, while Abraham 
Lincoln was marching at the same time to martyrdom in its 
defense ! Strange times have fallen when those of us who had 
the great honor to be associated in higher or lower degree 
with Mr. Lincoln in the administration of the Government 
live to hear men in public life and on the floors of Congress, 
fresh from the battle-fields of the rebellion, threatening the peo- 
ple of the United States that the Democratic party, in power 
for the first time in eigliteen years, proposes not to sta}' its 



FALSE ISSUE RAISED BY THE DEMOCRATIC TARTY. 257 

hand until every vestige of the war measures lias been willed 
out! The Vice-President of the late confederacy boasted — 
perhaps I would better say stated — that for sixty out of the 
seventy-two years preceding the outbreak of the rebellion, 
from the foundation of the Government, the South, though in 
a minority, had, by combining with what he termed the " anti- 
centralists " in the North, ruled the country ; and in 1866 the 
same gentleman indicated in a speech, I think before the Legis- 
lature of Georgia, that by a return to Congress the Soutli might 
repeat the experiment with the same successful result. 

I read that speech at the time, but I little thought I should 
live to see so near a fulfillment of its baleful prediction. I 
see here to-day two great measures emanating, as I have said, 
not from a committee of either House, but from a Democratic 
caucus in which the South has an overwhelming majority, two- 
thirds in the House, and out of forty-two senators on the other 
side of this Chamber professing the Democratic faith, thirty 
are from the South — twenty-three, a positive and pronounced 
majority, having themselves been participants in the revolt 
against the Union either in military or civil station. As a 
matter of fact therefore the legislation of this country to-day, 
shaped and fashioned in a Democratic caucus where the con- 
federates of the South hold the majority, is the realization of 
Mr. Stephens's prophecy. Very appropriately the House under 
that control and the Senate under that control, embodying thus 
the entire legislative powers of the Government, deriving its 
political strength from the South, elected from the South, say 
to the President of the United States, at the head of the Ex- 
ecutive Department of the Government, elected by the whole 
people, but elected as a Northern man ; elected on Republican 
principles, elected in opposition to the party that controls both 
branches of Congress to-day — they boldly say, "You shall not 
exercise your Constitutional power to veto a bill." 
, Some gentleman may rise and say, " Do you call it revolution 
to put an amendment on an appropriation bill?" Of course 
not. There have been a great many amendments put on appro- 
priation bills, some mischievous and some harmless ; but T call 
it the audacity of revolution for any senator or representative, 
or any caucus of senators or representatives, to get together and 



258 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

say, '* We will have this legislation or we will stop the great 
departments of the Government." That is revolutionary. I 
do not think it will amount to revolution ; my opinion is it will 
not. I think it is a revolution which will not revolve. But it 
is a revolution if persisted in, and if not persisted in, it must 
be retreated from with ignominy. The Democratic party in 
Congress have put themselves exactly in this position to-day, 
that if they go forward in the announced programme, they 
march to revolution. I think they will, in the end, go back- 
ward in ignominious retreat. That is my judgment. I think 
it the judgment of all who observe the operation of general 
principles ! 

The extent to which they control the legislation of the 
country is worth pointing out. In round numbers, the South- 
ern people are about one-third of the population of the Union. 
I am not permitted to speak of the organization of the House 
of Representatives, but I can refer to that of the last House. 
In the last House of Representatives, of the forty-two standing 
committees the South had twenty-five. I am not blaming the 
honorable Speaker for it. He was hedged in by partisan 
forces, and <30uld not avoid it. In this very Senate, out of 
thirty-four standing committees the South has twenty-two. I 
am not calling these things up at this time in reproach ; I am 
only showing what an admirable prophet was the vice-president 
of the late Southern confederacy, how entirely true all liis 
words have been, and how he has lived to see them realized. 

I do not profess to know, Mr. President, least of all senators 
on this floor, certainly as little as any senator on this floor, do 
I profess to know, what the President of the United States will 
do when these bills are presented to him, as I suppose in due 
course of time they will be. I certainly should never speak a 
word of disrespect of the gentleman holding that exalted posi- 
tion, and I hope I should not speak a word unbefitting the 
dignity of the office of a senator of the United States. But as 
there has been speculation here and there on both sides as to 
what he would do, I should expect that the dead heroes of the 
Union would rise from their graves sooner than he should 
consent to be intimidated and outraged in his i)roper Constitu- 
tional power by threats like these I 



FALSE ISSUE RAISED BY THE DEMOCRATIC TARTY. 259 

All the war measures of Abraham Lincoln are to be wiped 
out, say leading Democrats ! The Bourbons of France busied 
themselves, after the restoration, in removing every trace of 
Napoleon's power and grandeur, even chiseling the '^ N " from 
public monuments raised to perpetuate his glory ; but the dead 
man's hand from St. Helena reached out and destroyed them 
in their pride and in their folly. Let the senators on the other 
side of this Chamber remember — let the Democratic party 
North and South remember, that the tomb of the martyred 
President on the prairies of Illinois is not less sacred or less 
potent with the American people than was the dust t)f Napoleon 
to the France that he loved ! Though dead, the Great President 
speaketh. 

When you present these bills with these threats to the living 
President, who bore the commission of Abraham Lincoln and 
served with honor in the Army of the Union which Lincoln 
restored and preserved, I can think of only one appropriate 
response from his lips or his pen : 

" I« thy servant a dog that he should do this thing ? " 



260 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AGAINST STATE SOV- 
EREIGNTY. — POSITION OF MR. WEBSTER. 



[In a debate in the United States Senate involving this question Mr. Blaine 
made the following speech on the 19th of May, 1879.] 

Mr. President, — Whether the honorable Senator from 
Connecticut [Mr. Eaton] or myself should the more correctly 
remember a paragraph from Mr. Webster's speeches is a matter 
of small personal consequence, and of no jjublic importance. 
It is not, therefore, with any intention of vindicating a better 
memory or a more accurate quotation that I refer to this sub- 
ject; but it is because there has been a persistent attempt, 
in which I am sorry the Senator from Connecticut has taken 
part, to misrepresent Mr. Webster and declare that near the 
close of his life and at the end of his political career he 
changed his views, and that he had somewhere to some public 
assemblage practically retracted the great arguments he had 
made against the State-rights heresies and in behalf of the Con- 
stitution and the Union. The honorable Senator from Connec- 
ticut on the occasion to which he has himself made reference 
spoke thus : — 

" I said that Mr. Webster called this ' a confederacy of States.' I say he 
called it not only a confederacy of States, but ' a confederation of States.' " 

A little later, during a brief colloquy between the Senator 
and myself, he said : — 

" When he reads a few words from a certain speech of Mr. Webster does 
the honorable Senator from IVIaine undertake to assert on this floor that Mr. 
Webster did not ag'ain and again call this Government not only ' a confed- 
eration of States ' but ' a compact between States "? I say he did." 

Still again the Senator from Connecticut said : — 

" When the proper time arrives — I have not the library of Mr. Webster 
in my pocket, I do not carry it around with nie [laughter] — when the 
proper time arrives I will show that INIr. Webster called this ' a confed- 
eracy ' and 'the Constitution a compact.' " 



NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY. 261 

The honorable Senator came into the Senate on Friday last 
and very frankly and magnanimously admitted that he had not 
been able to find that Mr. Webster had in any speech called 
this Government a " confederacy of States," but he was very 
sure he had called it "a compact" and "a compact between 
the States." Let me read what the honorable Senator said : — 

" In 1851, in his celebrated Capon Springs speech, the language of Mr. 
Webster admits of no dispute. Whatever he may have said on other occa- 
sions, whatever he said in his great discussion on the floor of tlie Senate with 
JNIr. Hayne or with Mr. Callioun, on the occasion of this speech, in the most 
unqualified manner, he asserted the fact for which I contend, that the Con- 
stitution is a compact between parties competent to enter into a compact, to 
wit, the States." 

The honorable senator held in his hand at that time a very 
mischievous book, and I may say he derived his facts, if not his 
inspiration, from that book, which is now before me. It is a 
book written by a gentleman of great influence in the South, 
of acknowdedged ability, of long and eminent service in the 
public councils, — Mr. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia. It 
is, as I have said, a mischievous book. It is mischievous in its 
title, it is mischievous in its preface, it is mischievous in every 
word from the opening to the closing chapter ; and it is mis- 
chievous because, although the author is a sincere man him- 
self, it is an elaborate tissue of absolute misrepresentations, 
and misrepresentations from a sincere man are much more 
hurtful than misrepresentations from one who designs to 
misrepresent. 

In this book, Mr. Stephens takes the ground that Mr. Webster 
had recanted, and changed liis views in regard to the nature of 
our Government. On the four hundred and third page of the 
first volume he says : — 

"But besides all this, as a further proof of Mr. Webster's change of views 
as to the Constitution being a compact between the States, I cite you to a 
later speech made by him at Capon Springs, in Virginia, on the 28th June, 
1851." 

And he quotes then what the Senator from Connecticut 
quoted in this Chamber. Mr. Stephens then says : — 

" In this speech Mr. Webster distinctly held that the Union was a union 
of States. That the Union was founded upon compact." 



2G2 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Again Mr. Stephens says : — 

" I did not agree with him [I\Ir. Webster] in his exposition of the Consti- 
tution in 1S33, but I did fuily and cordially agree with him in his exposition 
in 1839 and IS'^L According to that the Constitution was and is 'a com- 
pact between the States.'" 

In this ingenious attempt to justif}^ tlie secession that took 
phicc in 1861, handing it down to posterity in a liistory entitled 
" The War l)et\veen the States," instead of a Rebellion against 
the Grovernjnent, Mr. Stephens endeavors to enlist Mr. Webster 
as one of the witnesses in justification of the action of the 
Southern people. 

Mr. President, mere definition, or the mere rhetorical use, of a 
word is not always a matter on which time can be profitably 
spent. When a man speaks of a '' compact " rhetorically, when 
he speaks of a " continental empire " rhetorically, when he 
speaks of an " imperial republic " rhetorically, or when, like the 
Senator from Connecticut, he speaks of a " representative 
republic of sovereign States," I do not expect to hold him very 
closely to the line of the definition ; and if it were simply a 
verbal or literary criticism as to the manner in which this man 
or that man happened in a piece of public declamation to char- 
acterize the Government of the United States, it would not be 
worth while to spend the time of the Senate upon it. But the 
honorable Senator from Connecticut knows, and all with whom 
he is associated in the political revolution now attempted in this 
country know, that upon the line of division involved in these 
words is waged the contest between the two great parties that 
are contending for mastery in this Government ; that here is 
involved the true construction under which this Government 
is to be administered — whether the Government of the United 
States shall have the power to uphold itself, or whether it shall 
be the mere creature of the States, living and breathing and 
moving at their will and pleasure. 

On that line the two political parties in this country divide : 
and I have never known a more extraordinary attempt — I 
will not say disingenuous, for that would imply motive — 
1 have never known a more extraordinary attempt to twist and 
turn and confound distinctions than the attempt to make Mr. 
Webster's speech at Capon Springs the basis on which this 



NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY. 203 

revelation of his change of view should be established. Both 
jVlr. Stephens in his history and the honorable Senator from 
Connecticnt in his speech quoted from a ])amphlet co[)y of Mr. 
Webster's Capon Springs address. I thought I discovered when 
the honorable Senator was speaking, that he was not specially 
familiar with the speeches of Mr. Webster. I hope he will not 
think me scant in courtesy if I say that I have discovered still 
less familiarity now, because he need not have gone to Mr. 
Stephens's liistory to get these extracts, nor need he have 
referred to lost pamphlets containing tliB whole speecli ; for here 
in the authentic life of Mr. Webster, the biography to which 
Mr. Webster's friends are willing to trust his fame, his life by 
George T. Curtis, the speech is given in full. Just after that 
speech was delivered this same delusion which the Senator 
from Connecticut indicates went over all the South. It was 
everywhere heralded in the South that Mr. Webster had defined 
the Union as " a compact," and here is what his eminent biog- 
rapher says in regard to the report : — 

" What ]Mv. Webster had said at Capon Springs, in speaking of one of 
the coni2:)acts or compromises between the northern and sonthern sections 
of the Union, on which the Constitution was founded, was at once misrepre- 
sented as a confirmation by him of the doctrine that the Constitution itself 
is a compact between sovereign States, and as drawing after it, as a result- 
ing right, the right of State secession from the Union. A citizen of Nortli 
Carolina accordingly wrote to Mr. Webster on this subject, and received 
from him the following answer, which was immediately made public." 

I will not read the AA'hole of it, but ]Mr. Webster says, speak- 
ing of the Government : — 

" It is not a limited confederation, but a Government ; and it proceeds 
upon the idea that it is to be perpetual, like other forms of Govermnent, 
subject only to be dissolved by revolution." 

" What I said at Capon Springs was an argument addressed to the 
North, and intended to convince the North that if by its superiority of num- 
bers it should defeat the operation of a plain, undoubted and undeniable 
injunction of the Constitution, intended for the esj^ecial protection of the 
South, such a proceeding must necessarily end in the breaking up of the 
(iovernmeut ; that is to say, in a revolution." 

Here is what Mr. Webster in the speech itself said in review- 
ing the condition of public sentiment then threatening the 
revolution which was ten years later attempted ; and here is 



264 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

what Mr. Stephens is careful not to quote, and what therefore 
my honorable friend from Connecticut could not have* been 
expected to (juote in his speech. Mr. Webster in referring to 
the disunion movement found in the South, the State-rights 
movement then running wild through the cotton States, 
said : — 

" I make no argument against resolutions, conventions, secession speeches 
or proclaidatioiis. Let these things go on. The whole matter, it is to be 
hoped, will blow over, and men will return to a sounder mode of thinking. 
But one thinf/, r/enlleynen, be assured of, the Jirsl step taken in the prorjramme of 
secession, ivhich shaU he an actual infriu(jenient of the Constitution or the laws, 
will be prompthj met. [Great applause.] 

" And I would not remain an hour in any administration that should not 
immediately meet any such violation of the Constitution and the law effect- 
ually and at once. [Prolonged applause.] " 

Mr. Stephens does not quote that. But how absurd, Mr. 
President, how unjust is it to catch up a chance remark at a 
watering-place for the purpose of justifying a certain section of 
this country which drifted into war in support of a bad theory 
and which is drifting back into that theory as fast as it can ! 
How absurd, how unjust is it to pick up a chance speech 
delivered in answer to a serenade, as the conclusive Constitu- 
tional opinions of Mr. Webster, when Mr. Webster himself had 
left in the very last year of his life, and after that speech was 
delivered, six volumes of his works on Avhich he desired to go 
down to posterity, on which he rested his fame, and on which 
he inscribed formal introductions. From these volumes I quote 
the following : — 

" The principles and opinions expressed in these pi'oductions are such as 
I believe to be essential to the preservation of the Union, the maintenance 
of the Constitution, and the advancement of the country to still higher 
stages of prosperity and renown. These objects have constituted my polar 
star during the whole of my political life, which has now extended through 
more than half the period of the existence of the Government." 

On these speeches, delivered by Mr. Webster in the Senate 
and in the House -and on great public occasions, revised by 
himself, pul)lislied under his auspices, he committed himself to 
history ; and from these neither Mr. Stephens in his mischiev- 
ous narrative nor the honorable Senator from Connecticut in 
his remarks ventures to quote any thing at all. You can hardly 
open a solitary page in the whole six volumes that does not 



NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY. 265 

contain a startling refutation of all the theories which they now 
pretend Mr. Webster had admitted in the closing days of his 
life. Let me take one instance at random. 

In some very brief remarks that I made the other afternoon 
when the bill which the President vetoed was about to be voted 
upon, I stated that the Democratic party of to-day as repre- 
sented in this Chamber were the followers of the State-rights 
school of Democracy represented by Mr. Calhoun and Mr. 
Breckinridge. I believe I was correct in that statement. I 
believe I was' quite within the facts. I read now from Mr. 
Calhoun's own definition in his celebrated discussion with Mr. 
Webster, and I think the resolution exactly fits and fills the 
idea of the Senator from Connecticut as to the true theory of 
this Government if I understood him aright. Mr. Calhoun 
submitted the following : — 

" Resolved, That the people of the several States composing these United 
States are united as parties to a Constitutional compact to which the people 
of each State acceded as a separate sovereign community, each binding itself 
by its own particular ratification ; and that the Union, of which the said 
compact is the bond, is a Union between the States ratifying the same." 

That is the Democratic theory to-day. I doubt if there is a 
senator on the other side of the Chamber who will controvert 
these words of Mr. Calhoun : the Senator from Connecticut 
asserts the same doctrine in terms. Mr. Calhoun proceeds in 
a long series of resolutions to' disprove_ the proposition that 
we constitute "a Nation." In answer, Mr. Webster after an 
elaborate speech sums up and says : — 

" And now, sir, against all these theories and opinions, I maintain — 
" 1. That the Constitution of the United States is not a league, confederacy, 
or compact between the people of the several States in their sovereign capa- 
cities, but a Government proper, founded on the adoption of the people, and 
creating direct relations between itself and individuals." 

The honorable Senator from Connecticut devoted consider- 
able time the other day to showing that the Constitutional 
Convention in 1787 expressly excluded the idea that they were 
founding a nation. Mr. Webster farther on in the same speech 
says : — 

" But, sir, let us go to the actual formation of the Constitution ; let us 
open the journal of the convention itself, and we shall see that the very first 
resolution which the convention adopted was, ' that a National government 



266 IMILITTCAL DISCUSSIONS. 

ouffht to be estahligJied, (■onslsli)i(/ of a .-supreme legislature, judiciari/, and execu- 
tive.' 

" This itself completely negatives all idea of league and comijact and 
confederation. Terms could not be chosen more fit to express an intention 
to establish a naliomd government, and to banish forever all notion of a 
compact between sovereign States." 

Yet the Senator from Connecticut broadly asserted that Mr. 
Webster had made tlie dechiration that this Union was "a 
compact of States "' jnst as Mr. Stephens asserts it in his mis- 
chievous book. 

Mr. Eaton. If my friend will permit me, was not that 
ver}^ resolution which he has just read voted down, and voted 
down on motion of Mr. Ellsworth of Connecticut? 

Mr. Blaine. No, sir ; instead of being voted down, it was 
voted up. I will read wdiat Mr. Webster says : — 

" This resolution was adopted on the 30th of INIay, 17S7. Afterward the 
style was altered, and instead of being called a National government it was 
called the Government of the United States ; but the substance of this 
resolution was retained, and was at the head of that list of resolutions which 
was afterwards sent to the committee who were to frame the instrument." 

Mr. Webster continues : — 

" It is true, there were gentlemen in the convention, who were for retain- 
ing the confederation, and amending its articles ; but the majority was 
against this, and was for a National government. 

"If, sir, any historical fact in the world be plain and undeniable, it is that 
the convention deliberated on the expediency of continuing the confedera- 
tion, with some amendments, and rejected that scheme, and adopted the plan 
of a National government, with a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary 
of its own. They were asked to preserve the league, they rejected the propo- 
sition. They were asked to continue the existing compact betw^een States, 
they rejected it. They rejected compact, league, and confederation, and set 
themselves about framing the constitution of a national government ; and 
they accomplished what they undertook.''^ 

In view of these declarations, I do not think the Senator from 
Connecticut or the honorable author of that book will wish to 
quote Mr. Webster as saying that the Union was " a compact 
between States." The sense in which Mr. Webster did use 
" compact " is seen in his reference to the ratification of the 
Constitution by the several States. 

He said, — 

" Among all the other ratifications, there is not one which speaks of the 
Constitution as a compact bet\veen States. Those of Massachusetts and 
New Hampshire express the transaction, in my opinion, with sufiicient 



NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY. 267 

accuracy. Thej' recognize the Divine goodness 'in affording the people 
OF THE United States an opportnnity of entering into an explicit and 
solemn compact tcllh each other," by ' assenting to and ralifi/ine/ a new Constitu- 
tion.^ You will observe, sir, that it is the people, and not the States, who 
have entered into this compact, and it is the people of all the United 
States." 

I know you will not tire of hearing jNIr. Webster. I am 
making a verv good speech out of his works, far better than 
any thing I could say myself. The honorable Senator from 
Connecticut dwelt at length, and dwelt with that modest form 
of affirmation which sometimes distinguishes his utterances, 
upon the idea that no man could deny that it Avas the States 
that formed the Constitution, and he quoted as conclusive on 
that point the provision that it should go into effect upon the 
ratification of nine States. Mr. Webster, in his second speech 
on Foote's resolution, spoke thus : — 

" Sir, the opinion which the honorable gentleman [3Ir. Calhoun] main- 
tains is a notion founded in a total misapprehension, in my judgment, of 
the origin of this Government, and of the foundation on which it stands. 
I hold it to be a popular Government, erected by the people ; those who 
administer it, responsible to the people ; and itself capable of being 
amended and modified, just as the people may choose it should be. ft is as 
popular, just as truhj emanatincj from the people, as the State fjovermnents. It 
is created for one purpose; the State yovernments for another. It has its own 
powei's ; theij have theirs." 

And then Mv. Webster adds : — 

" We are here to administer a Constitution emanating immediately from 
the people, and trusted by them to our administration. // is not the creature 
of the State governments. It is of no moment to the argument, that cer- 
tain acts of the State Legislatures are necessary to fill our seats in this 
body. That is not one of their original State powers, a part of the sovereigntu 
of the State. It is a duty which' the people, by the (Constitution itself, itave 
imposed on the State Legislatures ; and which they might have left to be per- 
formed elsewhere, if they had seen fit." 

He says in another speech : — 

" So much, sir, for the argument, even if the premises of the gentleman 
were granted or could be proved. But, sir, the gentleman has failed to 
maintain his leading proposition. He has not shown, it cannot be shown, 
that the Constitutio'n is 'a compact between State governments.' The Con- 
stitution itself, in its very front, refutes that idea. It declares that it is 
ordained and established by the people of the United States. ... So far 
from saying that it is established by the governments of the several States, 
it does not even say that it is established by the people of the several States ; 
but it pronounces that it is established by the people of tlie United States in 
the aggregate. The gentleman says it must mean no more than the people 



268 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

of the several States. Doubtless the people of the several States, taten 
collectively, constitute the people of the United States ; but it is in this 
their collective capacity, it is as all the people of the United States, that 
they establish the Constitution. So they declare, and words cannot be 
plainer than the words used. 

" When the gentleman says the Constitution is a compact between the 
States he uses language exactly applicable to the old confederation. He 
speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789. He describes fully that old 
state of things then existing. The confederation was in strictness a com- 
pact; the States, as States, were parties to it. We had no other geuei-al 
government." 

Without continuing these extracts, Mr. President, I desire 
to call the attention of the Senate — I hope I do not overrate 
their importance — to the only occasions on which, besides this 
Capon Springs speech, which Mr. Webster himself hastened to 
correct by letter, Mr. Stephens rests his extraordinary charge. 
They are, first, a letter which Mr. Webster addressed when he 
was in London in 1839 to Baring Brothers & Co., a most 
respectable and eminent firm of British merchants and financial 
agents. 

At that time agents of several States of the Union were 
in London trying to negotiate loans for internal improvements. 
A doubt was suggested as to whether under the Constitutional 
inhibition that no State could emit bills of credit a State had 
the right to negotiate a loan by issuing bonds, and Mr. Webster 
at the request of the merchants to whom I have referred wrote 
an explanatory letter. Because Mr. Webster said in explaining 
the different powers of the States and the United States Gov- 
ernment that it had been left to the States to regulate their 
own credit — I need not read the whole letter, it is several 
pages in length — Mr. Stephens represents him as acknowledg- 
ing the sovereignty of the States. It was a business letter 
wholly, and it concludes with a word which I think entirely 
negatives every presumption of the mischievous kind that Mr. 
Stephens endeavored to attribute to it. Mr. Webster says, in 
the closing paragraph : — 

"I hope T may be justified by existing circumstances in closing this letter 
with the expression of an opinion of a more general nature. It is, that I 
believe the citizens of the United States, like all honest men, regard debts, 
whether public or private, and whether existing at home or abroad, to be of 
moral as well as legal obligation ; and I trust I may appeal to their history, 
from the moment when those States took tJieh' rank among tJie nations of the 
earth to the present time, for proof that this belief is well founded." 



NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY. 269 

In 1838 Mr. Calhoun introduced in the Senate an elaborate 
series of resolutions affirming that the States had never taken 
any rank among the nations of the earth, and I believe the 
honorable Senator follows in the wake of that argument. 

Mr. Eaton. Produce what I say when you assert that 1 
have said that. 

Mr. Blaine. I have read a great deal from the Senator 
this morning, and I will read more before I get through, 

Mr. Eaton. Perhaps that will be the best part of your 
speech except what you read from Webster. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Blaine. I am obliged to the Senator for the excep- 
tion. It is equalled only by Dogberry's injunction, " Write 
God first." 

The other allegation of Mr. Stephens, as I was about to say, 
is that Mr. Webster, in 1838, five years after his speeches of 
1833, had refused to vote against these resolutions of Mr. 
Calhoun, and that this refusal was a very pregnant suggestion 
that he had then changed his mind. He makes a solemn pre- 
sentation of the fact that Mr. Webster had not voted on a series 
of five resolutions which Mr. Calhoun introduced in this body 
in 1838, involving all the heretical doctrines of the States-rights, 
pro-slavery Democracy. He does not say that Mr. Webster 
voted for them, but that he had not voted against them. Those 
resolutions of Mr. Calhoun were introduced in December, 1837. 
They were before the Senate, as such resolutions often are, as 
a foot-ball for political debate, for several months. On the 22d 
of March, 1838, after they had been passed upon by the Senate, 
Mr. Webster referred to them as follows, in regard to the 
slavery question : — 

" Sir, this is a very grave matter ; it is a subject very exciting and inflam- 
mable. I take, of course, all the responsibility belonging- to my opinions ; 
but I desire these opinions to be understood, and fairly stated. If I am to 
be regarded as an enemy to the South because I could not support the gen- 
tleman's resolutions, be it so. I cannot purchase favors from any quarter 
by the sacrifice of clear and conscientious convictions. The principal reso- 
lution declared that Congress had plighted its faith not to interfere either 
with slavery or the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Now, sir, this 
is quite a new idea. I never heard it advanced until this session. 

'' On such a question, sir, when I am asked what the Constitution is, or 
whether any power granted by it has been compromised away, or, indeed, 
could be compromised away, I must express my honest opinion, and always 



270 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

shall express it, if I say any thing, notwitlistandinc;- it may not meet cnn- 
currence eitlier in the South, or the Nortli, or the East, or the West. I 
cannot express by my vote what I do not believe. The gentleman has 
chosen to bring that subject into this debate, with which it has no concern, 
but he may nuvke the most of it, if he thinks he can produce unfavorable 
impressions against me at the South from my negative to his fifth resolution. 
As to the rest of them, they were commonplaces generally or abstractions, in 
regard to which one may well feel himself not called on to vote at all." 

With that record before him Mr. Stephens wrote tliat Mr. 
Webster's ominous refusal to vote on the resolutions indicated 
a change of mind, when here was his defiant review of the 
whole subject of Mr. Calhoun's heresies. Mr. Webster then 
proceeded with some remarks which I am disposed to think 
might now be addressed to the other side of the Chamber, 
mutatis mutandis, and we should hardly realize that forty years 
Jiad gone by. Let me read a single paragraph — I wish it were 
original with me, addressed as Mr. Webster then addressed it 
— to the opposite side of the Chamber. 

'• The honorable member from Carolina himself habitually indulges in 
charges of usurpation and oppression against the Government of hiscoun- 
try. He daily denounces its important measu^'es, in the language in which 
our Revolutionary fathers spoke of the oppressions of the mother country. 
Not merely against executive usurpation, either real or supposed, does he 
utter these sentiments, but against laws of Congress, laws passed by large 
majorities, laws sanctioned for a course of years by the people. These laws 
he proclaims, every hour, to be but a series of acts of oppression. He 
speaks of them as if it w^ere an admitted fact that such is their true char- 
acter. This is the language he utters, these are the sentiments he expresses, 
to the rising generation around him. Are they sentiments and language 
which are likely to inspire our children with the love of union, to enlarge 
their patriotism, or to teach them, and to make them feel, that their destiny 
has made them common citizens of one great and glorious Republic? A 
principal object in his late political movements, the gentleman himself 
tells us, was to unite the entire South : and against whom or against what 
does he wish to unite the entire South ? Is not this the vei-y essence of local 
feeling and local regard? Is it not the acknowledgment of a wish and 
object to create political strength bi/ uniting political opinions (jeoriraphicalhj ? 

"Finally, the honorable member declares that he shall now march off 
under the banner of State rights. March off from whom ? ]\Iavch off from 
what V We have been contending for great principles. We have been strug- 
gling to maintain the liberty and to restore the prosperity of the countrj'. 
We have made these struggles here, in the National councils, with the old 
flag — the true American flag, the eagle and the stars and stripes — wav- 
ing over the Chamber in which we sit. He now tells us, however, that he 
marches off under the State-rights banner. 

" Let him r/o. I remain. I am where I hare ever been, and ever mean to be.'' 

The lineal successors of Mr. Webster's great Constitutional 
views can utter those words to-day and direct them to the same 



NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY. 271 

side of the Chamber at which he aimed them forty years 
ago. 

I ought not to omit one small point, because there is one still 
left on which this charge of Mr. Webster's change of opinion 
is based. I think the Senator from Connecticut intimated that 
he would not read the Mark A. Cooper letter, although he gave 
a stronp' incidental assurance that if he did, it would contain all 
that he had alluded to about Mr. Webster's alleged approving 
reference to compact, or confederation. 

The Mark A. Cooj)er letter was a letter of courtesy in answer 
to a gentleman of that name at Macon, Georgia, inviting Mr. 
Webster to attend a State fair. Mr. Webster wrote with his 
own felicity of language in regard to agricultural tojjics, and 
toward the close of the letter occurs the following : — 

" Let me take the occasion to add, my dear sir, that as the forms and 
products of your agriculture are quite different from ours, as your soil and 
climate are different, and as your social and domestic institutions are also 
different, it was never intended by the Constitution under which we live 
that so foolish and impracticable a thing as amalgamation, in these respects, 
or any of them, should be attempted between Northern and Southern States. 
The States are united, confederated: — 

' Not, chaos-like, together crushed and braised, 
But, like the world, liarmoniously confused ; 
Where order iu variety we see. 
And where, though all things differ, all agree.' "' 

Could there be a more felicitous illustration of the charac- 
ter of the National Union than Mr. Webster embodied in this 
quotation ? It calls for no explanation : it needs only to be 
read. Its meaning cannot l)e changed by the misapprehensions 
of Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, nor can any word Mr. Webster 
ever spoke be perverted to the comfort of the States-rights 
Democracy. 



EULOGY OF SENATOR CHANDLER. 



[The Senate of the United States on the 2Sth of January, 1880, having under 
consideration resolutions of respect to the memory of Honorable Zachariah 
Chandler, who died on the 1st of November, 1879, Mr. Blaine said, — ] 

Mr. President, — Mr. Chandler sprang from a strong race of 
men and was reared in a State which has shed lustre on other 
Commonwealths by the gift of her native-born and her native- 
bred. She gave Webster to Massachusetts, Chief Justice Chase 
to Ohio, General Dix to New York, and Horace Greeley to the 
head of American journalism. Mr. Chandler left New Hamp- 
shire before he attained his majority, and with limited pecu- 
niary resources sought a home in the inviting territory of the 
North-West. He was endowed with great physical strength, 
remarkable powers of endurance, energy that could not be over- 
taxed, courage of the highest order ; was imbued with princi- 
ples which throughout his life were inflexible, was intelligent 
and well instructed, and was thus in all respects equipped for 
a career in the great Commonwealth where he lived and grew 
and prospered and died. 

For a long period following the second war with Great 
Britain the Territory of Michigan was governed by one of the 
most persuasive and successful of American statesmen ; whose 
pure and honorable life, whose grace and kindness of manner, 
and whose almost unlimited power in what was then a remote 
frontier Territory, had enabled him to mould the large majority 
of the early settlers to his own political views. When in 1833 
Mr. Chandler reached Detroit General Cass had left the scene 
of his long reign — for reign it might well be called — to 
assume control of the War Department under one of the strong- 
est administrations that ever governed the country. The great 
majority of young men at twenty years of age naturally drifted 
with a current that was so strong; but Mr. Chandler had 
inherited political principles which were deepened by his own 
convictions as he grew to manhood, and he took his stand at 
once and firmly with the minority. He was from the outset 

272 



EULOGY OF SENATOR CHANDLER. 273 

a recognized power in the political field ; though not until his 
maturer years, with fortune attained and the harder struggles 
of life crowned with victory, would he consent to hold public 
position. But he was in all the fierce conflicts which raged for 
twenty years in Michigan, and which ended in changing the 
political mastery of the State. It is not matter of wonder that 
personal estrangements occurred in such prolonged and bitter 
controversy, though often without diminution of mutual respect. 
In one of the most exciting periods of the struggle, General 
Cass spoke publicly of not enjoying the honor of Mr. Chandler's 
acquaintance. Three years afterward, as Mr. Chandler de- 
lighted to tell with good-natured and pardonable boasting, he 
carried to General Cass a letter of introduction from the Gov- 
ernor of Michigan which so impressed the General that he 
caused it to be publicly read in this Chamber and placed on the 
permanent hies of the Senate. It is to the honor of both these 
great men that complete cordiality of friendship was restored, 
and that in the hour of supreme peril to the nation which came 
soon after, General Cass and Mr. Chandler stood side by side 
maintaining the Union of the States by the exercise of the war 
power of the Government. They sleep their last sleep in the 
same beautiful cemetery near the city which was so long their 
home, under the soil of the State which each did so much to 
honor, and on the margin of the Great Lakes whose commercial 
development, spanned by their lives, has been so greatlj' jjro- 
moted by their efforts. 

The anti-slavery agitation which broke forth with violence 
in 1854, after the repeal of the Missouri compromise, was soon 
followed by partial re-action, and in 1856 Mr. Buchanan was 
chosen to the Presidency. Mr. Chandler took his seat for the 
first time in this body on the day of Mr. Buchanan's inaugura- 
tion. It was the first public station he had ever held except 
the Mayoralty of Detroit for a single term, and the first for 
which he had ever been a candidate, except in 1852 when he 
consented to lead the forlorn hope of the Whigs in the contest 
for governor of Michigan. When he entered the Senate the 
Democratic party bore undisputed sway in this Chamber, hav- 
ing more than two-thirds of the entire body. The party was 
led by aggressive, able, uncompromising men, who played for 



274 EULOGY OF SENATOR CHANDLER. 

a high stake and wlio played the bold game of men who are 
willing to cast all upon the hazard of the die. The party in 
opposition, to which Mr. Chandler belonged, was weak in num- 
bers but strong in character, intellect, and influence. Seward, 
with his philosophy of optimism, his deep study into the work- 
ing of political forces, and his affluence of rhetoric, was its 
accepted leader. He was sustained by Sumner, with his wealth 
of learning and liis burning zeal for the right ; by Fcssendcn, 
less philosophic than Seward, less learned than Sumner, but 
more logical and skilled o' fence than either ; by Wade, who 
in mettle and make-up was a Cromwellian, who, had he lived 
in the daj^s of the Commonwealth, would have fearlessly fol- 
lowed the Protector in the expulsion of an illegal parliament, 
or drawn the sword of the Lord and of Gideon to smite hip 
and thigh the Amalekites who appeared anew in the persons 
of the Cavaliers ; by Collamer wise and learned, pure and dig- 
nified, a conscript father in look and in fact; by John P. Hale, 
who never faltered in his devotion to the anti-slavery cause, 
and who had earlier than any of his associates broken his alli- 
ance with the old parties and given his eloquent voice to the 
cause of the despised Nazarenes ; by Trumbnll, acute, able, 
untiring, the first Republican senator from that great State 
which has since added so much to the grandeur and glory of 
our history ; by Hamlin, with long training, with devoted 
fidelity, with undaunted courage, who came anew to the con- 
flict of ideas with a State behind him, with its faith and its 
force, and who alone of all the illustrious Senate of 1857 is 
with us to-day ; by Cameron, with wide and varied experience 
in affairs, with consummate tact in the government of parties, 
whose active political life began in the days of Monroe, and who, 
after a prolonged and stormy career, still survives by reason of 
strength, at fourscore, with the attachment of his friends, the 
respect of his opponents, the hearty good wishes of all. 

Into association with these men Mr. Chandler entered when 
in his forty-fourth year. His influence was felt, and felt power- 
fully, from the first day. A writer at the time said that the 
effect of Chandler's coming was like the addition of a fresh 
division of troops to an army engaged in a liand-to-hand conflict 
with an outnumbering foe. He encouraged, inspired, coerced 



EULOGY OF SENATOR CHANDLER. 275 

others to do tilings which he couhl not do himself, but which 
others could not huve done without him. His first four years 
in the Senate were passed in a hopeless minority, where a sense 
of common danger had banished rivalry, checlsed jealousy, and 
produced that harmony and discipline which won the most signal 
of all our political victories in the election of Abraham Lincoln 
to the Presidency. Changed by this triumph and the startling 
events which followed into a majority party in the Senate, the 
Republicans found many of their oldest and ablest leaders trained 
only to the duties of the minority, and not fitted to assume with 
grace and efficiency the task of administrative leadership. They 
had been so long studying the science of attack that they were 
awkward when the}' felt the need and assumed the responsibility 
of defense. They were like some of the British regiments in 
the campaign of Namur, of whom William of Orange said theie 
was no fortress of the French that could resist them, and none 
that was safe in their haiids. 

It was from this period that jMr. Chandler became more 
widely known to the whole country — achieving almost at a 
single bound what we term a National reputation. His defiant 
attitude in the presence of the impending danger of war ; his 
superb courage under the doubts and reverses of that terrible 
struggle between brethren of the same blood ; his readiness to 
do all things, to dare all things, to endure all things for the sake 
of victory to the Union ; his ardent support of Mr. Lincoln's 
administration in every war measure which they proposed ; his 
quickness to take issue with the administration when he thought 
a great campaign was about to })e ruined by what was termed 
the Fabian policy ; his inspiring presence, his burning zeal, his 
sleepless vigilance, his broad sympathies, his prompt decision, 
his eager patriotism, his crowning faith in the final result, all 
combined to give to Mr. Chandler a front rank among the 
devoted men who in our war history are entitled to stand next 
to those who led the mighty conflict on the field of battle. 

To portray Mr. Chandler's career for the ten consecutive 
years after the war closed would involve too close a reference 
to exciting questions still in some sense at issue. But in that 
long period of service and in the shorter one that immediately 
preceded his death, those who knew him well could observe a 



276 EULOGY OF SENATOR ClIAXDLER. 

constant intellectual growth. He was fuller and stronger and 
abler in conference and in debate the last year of his life than 
ever before. He entered the Senate originally without practice 
in parliamentary (liscussion. He left it one of the most forcible 
as well as most fearless antagonists that could be encountered 
in this Chamber. His methods were learned here. He was 
plain and yet eloquent ; aggressive and yet careful ; brave with- 
out showing bravado. What he knew, he knew with precision ; 
the powers he possessed were always at his command and he 
never declined a challenge to the lists. " Here and now " was 
his motto, and his entire senatorial career seemed guided by 
tliat courageous spirit which the greatest of American senators 
exhibited, in the only boast he ever made, when he quoted to 
Mr. Calhoun the classic defiance : — 

Concurritur ; horae 
Moinento cita mors venit, aiit victoria laeta. 

Mr. Chandler's fame was enlarged by his successful adminis- 
tration of an important Cabinet position. Called by President 
Grant to the head of the Interior Department by telegraphic 
summons, he accepted without reluctance and without distrust. 
His positive and uncompromising course in the Senate for eigh- 
teen years had borne the inevitable fruit of many enmities as 
well as the rich reward of countless friends. The appointment 
was severely criticised by many who, a year later, were suffi- 
ciently just and magnanimous to withdraw their harsh words 
and bear generous testimony to his executive ability, his pains- 
taking industry, and his inflexible integrity ; to his admirable 
talent for thorough organization and to his prompt and grace- 
ful dispatch of public business. What his friends had before 
known of his character and his capacity the chance of a few 
brief months in an administrative position had revealed to the 
entire country and had placed in history. 

It would not be just even in the generous indulgence con- 
ceded to eulogy to speak of Mr. Chandler as a man without 
faults. But assuredly no enemy, if there be one above his 
lifeless form, will ever say that he had mean faults. They 
were all on the generous and larger side of his nature. In 
amassing his princely fortune he never exacted the pound of 



EULOGY OF SP:NAT0R CHANDLER. 277 

flesh ; he never ground the faces of the poor ; he was never 
even harsh to an honest debtor unable to pay. His wealth 
came to him through his own ability, devoted with unremitting 
industry for a third of a century to honorable trade in that 
enlarging, ever-expanding region, wliose capacities and resources 
he was among the earliest to foresee and to appreciate. 
' To his friends Mr. Chandler was devotedly true. Like 
Colonel Benton, he did not use the word " friend " lightly and 
without meaning ; nor did he ever pretend to be friendly to a 
man whom he did not like. He never dissembled. To describe 
him in the plain and vigorous Saxon which he spoke himself — 
he was a warm friend, an honest hater, a hard hitter. 

In the inner circle of home life, sacred almost from refer- 
ence, Mr. Chandler was chivalric in devotion, inexhaustible in 
affection, and exceptionally happy in all his relations. What- 
ever of sternness there was in his character, whatever of rough- 
ness in his demeanor, whatever of irritability in his temper, 
were one and all laid aside when he sat at his own hearthstone, 
or dispensed graceful and generous hospitality to unnumbered 
guests. There he was seen at his best, and there his friends 
best love to recall him. As Burke said of Lord Keppel, he 
was a wild stock of pride on which the tenderest of hearts 
had grafted the milder virtues. 

A sage whose words have comforted many generations of 
men tells us that when death comes every one can see its de- 
plorable and grievous side ; only the wise can see causes for 
reconcilement. Let us be wise to-day and celebrate the memory 
of a man who stood on the confines of age without once feel- 
ing its weakness or realizing its decay ; who passed sixty-six 
years in tliis world withcfut losing a single day of mental 
■activity or physical strength ; who had a business career of 
unbroken prosperity ; who had attained a fourth election to the 
Senate of the United States, an honor enjoyed by fewer men in 
the Republic than even its Chief Rulership, and who strengthen- 
ing with his years stood higher in the regard of his countrymen, 
firmer with his constituency, nearer to his friends, and dearer to 
his kindred, at the close of liis career than on any preceding day 
of his eventful life. 



278 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



OUGHT THE NEGRO TO BE DISFRANCHISED? 
OUGHT HE TO HAVE BEEN ENFRANCHISED? 



[The North American Review of March, 1880, contained a series of articles 
on these interrogatories. The articles were arranged in the form of a discussion 
in which Mr. Blaine opened with the following paper.] 

These questions liave lately been asked by many who have 
been distinguished as the special champions of the negro's 
rights ; by many who liave devoted their lives to redressing the 
negro's wrongs. The questions owe their origin not to any cool- 
ing of philanthropic interest, not to any novel or radical views 
about universal suffrage, but to the fact that, in the judgment 
of many of those hitherto accounted wisest, negro suffrage has 
failed to attain the ends hoped for when the franchise was con- 
ferred ; failed as a means of more completely securing the 
negro's civil rights ; failed to bring him the consideration 
wliich generally attaches to power ; failed, indeed, in every 
thing except to increase the political weight and influence of 
those against whom, and in spite of whom, his enfranchisement 
was secured. 

Those who have reached this conclusion, and those who are 
tending toward it, argue that the important franchise was pre- 
maturely bestowed on the negro ; that its possession necessarily 
places him in inharmonious relations with tlie white race ; that 
the excitement incident to its free enjoyment hinders him from 
progress in the rudimentary and essential branches of educa- 
tion ; that his advance in material wealth is thus delayed and 
obstructed ; and that obstasles, which would not otherwise 
exist, are continually accumulating in his path — rendering his 
progress impossible and his oppression inevitable. In other 
words, that suffrage in the hands of the negro is a challenge to 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT. 279 

the white race for a contest in which the former is sure to be 
over-matched; and that the withdrawal of the franchise would 
remove all conflict, restore kindly relations between the races, 
hold white men to their proper and honorable responsibility, 
and assure to each race the largest prosperity attainable in a 
Government under which both are compelled to live. 

The class of men whose views are thus hastily summarized 
do not contemplate the withdrawal of the suffrage from the 
negro without a corresponding reduction in the representation 
in Congress of the States where the negro is a large factor in 
the apportionment. Yet it is quite probable that they have 
not given thought to the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, 
of compassing that end. Under the Constitution, as it is now 
construed, the diminution of representative strength could only 
result from the enactment by the States of such laws as would 
disfranchise the negro by some educational or property test, 
as it is forbidden by the Fifteenth Amendment to disfranchise 
him on account of his race. But the Southern States will not 
do this, and for two reasons : first, they will in no event con- 
sent to a reduction of representative strength; and, second, 
they could not make any disfranchisement of the negro that 
would not at the same time disfranchise a great number of 
whites. 

Another class — mostly resident in tlie South, but with 
numerous sympathizers in the North — would be glad to have 
the negro disfranchised on totally different grounds. Born and 
reared with the belief that the negro is inferior to the white 
man in every thing, it is hard for the class who were masters at 
the South to endure any phase or form of equality on the part 
of the negro. Instinct governs reason, and with the mass of 
Southern people the aversion to equality is instinctive and 
ineradicable. The general conclusion with this class would be 
to deprive the negro of voting if it could be done without 
impairing the representation of their States, but not to make 
any move in that direction so long as diminished powder in 
Congress is the constitutional and logical result of a denial or 
abridgment of suffrage. In the mean while, seeing no mode 
of legally or equitably depriving the negro of his suffrage 
except with unwelcome penalty to themselves, the Southern 



280 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

States as a whole — difreriiig in degree but the same in effect — 
have striven to achieve by indirect and unhuvful means what 
they cannot achieve directly and lawfully. They have as far 
as possible made negro suffrage of none efl'ect. They have done 
this against law and against justice. 

Having stated the position of both classes on this question, I 
venture now to give my own views in a series of statements in 
which I shall endeavor to embody both argument and conclu- 
sion : — 

The two classes I have described, contemplating the possible 
or desirable disfranchisement of the negro from entirel}' dif- 
ferent points of view, and with entirely different aims, are both 
and equally in the wrong. The first is radically in error in 
supposing that a disfranchisement of the negro would put him 
in the way of any development or progress that would in time 
lit him for the suffrage. He w^ould instead grow more and more 
unfit for it from the time the first backward step should be 
taken, and he would relapse, if not into actual chattel slavery, 
yet into such a dependent and defenseless condition as would 
result in simply another form of servitude. For the ballot 
to-day, imperfectly enjoyed as it is by the negro, its freedom 
unjustly and illegally curtailed, its independence ruthlessly 
marred, its purity defiled, is withal and after all, the strong 
shield of the race against a form of servitude which would pre- 
sent all the cruelt}- and none of the alleviations of the old slave 
system, whose destruction carried with it the shedding of so 
much innocent blood. 

— The second class is wrong in anticipating even the remote 
possibility of securing the legal disfranchisement of the negro 
without a reduction of representation. Both sides have fenced 
for position on this question. But for the clause regulating 
representation in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitu- 
tion the South would to-day be wholly under the control, and 
legally under the control, of those who rebelled against the 
Union and sought to erect the Confederate Government ; — 
the negroes being counted in the apportionment without the 
slightest concession of suffrage to the race. The Fourteenth 
Amendment was designed to prevent this, and, if it does not 
succeed in preventing it, it is because of evasion and violation 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT. 281 

of its clear intent and of its express provisions. Those who 
erected the Confederate Government may be in exclusive pos- 
session of power throughout the South, but they are not so 
fairly and legally ; and they will not be permitted to continue 
in the enjoyment of political power unjustly seized — seized in 
derogation and in defiance of the rights not merely of the negro 
but of the white man in all other sections of the country. In- 
justice cannot stand before exposure and argument and the 
force of public opinion. No sharper weapons of defense will 
be required against the wrong which now afflicts the South and 
is a scandal to the whole country. 

But while discussing the question of the disfranchisement 
of the negro, and settling its justice or expediency according 
to our best discretion, it may be worth while to look at its 
impracticability, or, to state it still more strongly, its impossi- 
bility. Logicians attach weight to arguments drawn ah incon- 
venienti. Arguments must be still more cogent, and conclusions 
still more decisive, when drawn ab impossibiU. The negro is 
secure against disfranchisement by two Constitutional Amend- 
ments, and he cannot be remanded to the non-voting class 
until both these amendments are annulled. These amendments 
cainiot be annulled until two-thirds of the Senate and two-thirds 
of the House of Representatives of the United States shall 
propose, and a majority in the Legislatures or conventions of 
three-fourths of all the States shall by affirmative vote approve 
the annulment. Li other words, the negro cannot be disfran- 
chised so long as one vote more than one-third in the United 
States Senate, or one vote more than one-third in the House of 
Representatives, shall be recorded against it ; and if these 
securities and safeguards should give way, then the disfran- 
chisement could not be effected so long as a majority in one 
branch in the Legislatures of one State more than a fourth of 
all the States should refuse to assent to it, and refuse to 
assent to a convention to which it might be referred. No 
human right on this continent is more completely guaranteed 
than the right against disfranchisement on account of race, 
color, or previous condition of servitude, as embodied in the 
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 
In enforcement and elucidation of my second point, it is 



282 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

of interest to observe the rapid advance and development of 
popular sentiment in regard to the riglits of the negro as ex- 
pressed in the last three amendments to the Constitution of the 
United States. In 1865 Congress submitted the Thirteenth 
Amendment, which merely gave the negro freedom, without 
suffrage, civil rights, or citizensliip. In 1866 the Fourteenth 
Amendment was submitted, declaring the negro to be a citizen, 
but not forbidding the States to withhold suffrage from him — 
yet inducing them to grant it by the provision that representa- 
tion in Congress should be reduced in proportion to the exclu- 
sion of male citizens twenty-one years of age from the right to 
vote, except for rebellion or other crime, in 1869 the decisive 
step was taken of declaring that " the right of citizens of the 
United States to vote shall not be abridged by the United 
States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous 
condition of servitude." A most important provision in this 
amendment is the inhibition upon the " United States " as well 
as upon " any State ; " for it Avould not be among the impossible 
results of a great political revolution, resting on prejudice and 
reaching for power, that, in the absence of this express negation, 
the United States might assume or usurp the right to deprive 
the negro of suffrage, and then the States would not be sub- 
jected to the forfeiture of representation provided in the Four- 
teenth Amendment as the result of the denial or abridgment 
of suffrage by State authority. — In this stately progression of 
organic enactments the Avill of a great people is embodied, and 
its reversal would be one of those revolutions which would con- 
vulse social order and endanger the authority of law. There 
will be no step backward, but under the provision which specifi- 
cally confers on Congress the power to enforce each amendment 
by " appropriate legislation," there will be applied, from time to 
time, fitfully perhaps and yet certainly, the restraining and 
correcting edicts of National authority. 

As I have already hinted, there will be no attempt made 
in the Southern States to disfranchise the negro by any of 
those methods which are still within the power of the State. 
There is no Southern State that would dare venture on an 
educational qualification, because by the last census there were 
more than one million white persons over fifteen years of 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT. 28S 

age, in the States lately slave-holding, who could not read, 
and a still larger number who could not write. There was, 
of course, a still greater number of negroes of the same ages 
who could not read or write ; but, in the nine years that have 
intervened since the census was taken, there has been a much 
greater advance in the education of the negroes than in the 
education of the poor whites of the South ; and to-day on an 
educational qualification it is probable that, while the propor- 
tion would be in favor of the whites, the absolute exclusion 
of the whites in some of the States would be nearly as great 
as that of the negroes. Nor would a property test operate with 
any greater advantage to the whites. The slave States always 
contained a large class of very poor and entirely uneducated 
whites, and any qualification of property that would seriously 
diminish the negro vote would also cut off a very large number 
of whites from the suffrage. 

Thus far I have directed my argument to the first question 
proj^ounded, "Ought the negro to be disfranchised?" The 
second interrogatory, " Ought he to have been enfranchised ? " 
is not practical but speculative. Yet, unless it can be an- 
swered with confidence in the affirmative, the moral tenure of 
his sufi'rage is weakened, and, as a consequence, his legal right 
to enjoy it is impaired. For myself I answer the second ques- 
tion in the affirmative, with as little hesitation as I answered 
the first in the negative. If the question were again sub- 
mitted to the judgment of Congress, I would vote for suffrage 
in the light of experience with more confidence than I voted for 
it in the light of an experiment. Had the franchise not been 
bestowed upon the negro as his shield and weapon of defense^ 
the demand upon the General Government to interfere for his 
protection would have been constant, irritating and embar- 
rassing. Great complaint has been made for years past of the 
Government's interference, simply to secure to the colored citi- 
zen his plainest Constitutional right. But this intervention has 
been trifling compared to that which would have been required 
if we had not given suffrage to the negro. In the reconstruction 
experiments under President Johnson's plan, before the negro 
was enfranchised, it was clearly foreshadowed that he was to be 
dealt with as one having no rights except such as the whites 



284 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

should choose to grant. The negro was to work according to 
labor laws ; freedom of movement and transit was to be denied 
him by the operation of vagrant laws ; lil)erty to sell his time 
and his skill at their market value was to be restrained \)y 
apprentice laws ; and the slavery that was abolished by the 
Constitution of a Nation was to be revived by the enactment 
of a State. To counteract these and all like efforts at re-en- 
slavement, the National authority would have been constantly 
invoked ; interference in the most positive and peremptory 
manner would have been demanded, and angry conflict and 
possibly resistance to law would have resulted. The one sure 
mode to remand the States that rebelled against the Union to 
their autonomy was to give suffrage to the negro ; and that 
autonomy will be complete, absolute and unquestioned when- 
ever the rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution of the 
Republic shall be enjoyed in every State — as the administration 
of justice was assured in Magna Charta — " promptly and with- 
out delay ; freely and without sale ; completely and without 
denial." 

[Messrs. L. Q. C. Lamar, Wade Hampton, James A. Garfield, 
Alexander H. Stephens, Wendell Phillips, Montgomery Blah:, 
Thomas A. Hendricks, followed with a series of papers in reply. Mr. 
Blaine rejoined with the following paper.] 



At tlie instance of the editor of the North American Revieu\ 
and not by request or desire of mine, the brief article which I 
wrote in regard to negro suffrage was submitted to the gentle- 
men who have replied to it, and in turn their articles have been 
submitted to me. I have now the privilege of rejoinder, and 
the whole series of papers thus assumes the phase of a con- 
nected discussion. 

With the exception of Mr. Wendell Phillips and General 
Garfield, the replies are from gentlemen identified with the 
Democratic party, and distinguished and influential in its coun- 
cils. General Garfield is a Republican, and has taken prom- 
inent and honorable part in all the legislation resj^ecting negro 
suffrage. His views are so entirely in harmony with my own 
that nothing is left me but to commend liis admirable statement 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEjMENT. 285 

of the case. ' Mr. Phillips is neither a Republican nor a Demo- 
crat, but reserves to himself the right— a right most freely 
exercised — to criticise and condemn either party with unspar- 
ino- severity, generally bestowing his most caustic denunciation 
upon the party to which he most inclines. It is by this sign 
that we feel occasionally comforted Avith the reflection that Mr. 
Phillips still has sympathies with the Republican party, and 
still indulges aspirations for its ultimate success. 

The arraignment of the Republicans at this late day by Mr. 
Phillips, because they did not reduce the Confederate States 
to Territories and govern them by direct exercise of Federal 
power, is causeless and unjust ; and it cannot certainly influence 
the judgment of any man whose memory goes back to 1866-67. 
For I assume that if any thing, not capable of demonstration, 
is yet an absolute certainty, it is that such an attempt by 
the' Republican party would have led to its utter overthrow at 
the initial point of its Reconstruction policy. The overthrow 
of the Republican party at that time would have restored the 
Confederate States to full power in the Union without the 
imposition of a single condition, without the exaction of a 
sino-le guaranty. The inestimable provisions of the Fourteenth 
Amendment would have been lost : its broad and comprehen- 
sive basis of citizenship ; its clause regulating representation in 
Congress and coercing the States into granting suffrage to the 
negro ; its guaranty of the validity of the war debt of the 
Union and of pensions to its soldiers and their widows and 
orphans ; its inhibition of any tax by General or State Govern- 
ment for debts incurred in aid of the rebellion or for the eman- 
cipation of any slave ! These great achievements for liberty, 
in addition to the Fifteenth Amendment, would have been put 
to hazard and probably lost, could Mr. PhiUips have had his 
way, in a vain struggle to reduce eleven States — four of them 
belonging to the original thirteen — to the condition of Terri- 
tories. Mr. Phillips would thus have committed the General 
Government to a policy as arbitrary and as sure to lead to 
corruption and tyranny as the proconsular system of Rome. 

As if the territorial policy were not enough to have de- 
stroyed the Republican party at that time, Mr. Phillips would 
have plunged us into the wild, visionary, and unconstitutional 



286 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

scheme of confiscating the land of the rebels and giving it to the 
freedmen. Confiscation laws were passed by Congress during 
the hottest period of the war ; but even then, when passions 
were at the highest, no enactment was proposed which did not 
recognize the express limitation of the Constitution that in 
punishing treason there should be no " forfeiture except during 
the life of the person attainted." The Republican party has 
been flippantly accused by its opponents of disregarding the 
Constitution, but I venture to say that there js no parallel in 
the w^orld to so strict an observance of w^'itten law during a 
critical contest as was shown by the Republicans throughout 
the protracted and bloody struggle that involved the fate of 
free government on this continent. It is impossible, therefore, 
that the Republican party could have adopted the policy which 
Mr. Phillips commends ; and impossible that it could have 
succeeded if the attempt had been made. 

Of the replies made by the other gentlemen, identified as 
they have been and are witli the Democratic party, it is note- 
worthy that, with the exception of Mr. Blair, they agree that 
the negro ought not to be disfranchised. As all these gentle- 
men were hostile to the enfranchisement of the race, their pres- 
ent position must be taken as a great step forward, and as an 
attestation of the wisdom and courage of the Republican party 
at the time they were violently opposing its measures. This 
general expression leaves Mr. Blair to be treated as an excep- 
tion, and for many of his averments the best answer is to be 
found in the suggestions and concessions of his Democratic 
associates, I need not make an elaborate reply to Mr. Blair, 
when he is answered with such significance and such point by 
those of liis ow^n jiolitical household. It is one of the curious 
developments of political history that a man who sat in the 
Cabinet of Abraham Lincoln and was present when Emancipa- 
tion was decreed should live to write a paper against the enfran- 
chisement of the negro, when the Vice-President of the Rebel 
Confederacy and two of its most distinguished officers are 
taking the other side I 

Of Governor Hampton's paper it is fair to say that it seems 
to have been written to cover a case. Its theory and a^jplica- 
tion are adapted to the latitude of South Carolina, and to 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT. 287 

his own political course. Mr. Hampton is a man of strong- 
parts, possessing courage and executive force, but he has been 
in the thick of the fight, and has had personal ambitions to 
o-ratify which may not place him in history as an impartial 
witness. His personality protrudes at every point, and his 
conception of what should be done and what should be undone 
<at the South is precisely what is included in his own career. 
When ]\Iirabeau was describing all the great qualities that 
should distinguish a popular leader, the keenest of French wits 
said he " had forgotten to add that he should be pock-marked." 

Mr. Lamar offers a contrast to Governor Hampton. He gen- 
eralizes and philosophizes with great ability, and presents the 
strange combination of a " refined speculatist " and a trustful 
optimist — embodying some of the characteristics of Mr. Cal- 
houn whom he devoutly followed, and of Mr. Seward whom he 
always opposed. Mr. Lamar is the only man in public life who 
can be praised in New England for a warm eulogy of Charles 
Sumner, and immediately afterward be elected to the Senate as 
the representative of the "white-line" Democrats of Mississippi. 
Yet, inconsistent as these positions are, it is the dream of Mr. 
Lamar's life to reconcile them. He is intensely devoted to 
the South; he has generous aspirations for the Union of the 
States ; he is shackled with the narrowing dogma of State 
rights, and yet withal has boundless hopes for an Imperial Re- 
public whose power shall lead and direct the civilization of 
the world. Hedged in by opposing theories, embarrassed l)y 
forces that seem irreconcilable, Mr. Lamar, probably more 
than any other man of the Democratic party, gives anxious 
and inquiring thought to the futui-e. 

Of Mr. Stephens and Mr. Hendricks it may be said that in 
their treatment of the question, one aims to vindicate the 
course of his native Georgia ; the other to gain som^ advantage 
for the Democratic party of the Nation. Mr. Stephens has the 
mind of a metaphysician, led astray sometimes in his logic 
and sometimes in his facts, but aiming always to promote the 
interest of the State to which he is devoted. Mr. Hendricks 
is an accomplished political leader, with large experience, pos- 
sessed of tact and address, and instinctively looking at every 
public question from its relation to the fate and fortune of his 



288 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

party. Mr. Stephens argues from tlie condition of Georgia. 
Mr. Hendricks has in view the Democracy of the nation. 

These Democratic leaders unite in upholding the suffi-age of 
tlie negro under existing circumstances, but each with an obvi- 
ous feeling that some contradiction is to be reconciled, some 
record to be amended, some consistency to be vindicated. 
They all unite, however, on the common ground of denouncing 
the men who controlled the negro vote at the outset in the 
interest of the Republican party. The underlying conclusion, 
not expressed but implied, is that if the military force had 
been absent and the persuasion of the Freedmen's Bureau had 
not been applied, the negroes would have flocked, as doves 
to their windows, to the outstretched and protecting arms of 
the Democratic part3^ This seems to be sheer recklessness 
of assumption ; the very bravado of argument. Why should 
the negro have been disposed to vote with the Democratic 
party? Mr. Hendricks says he was made to feel that "he 
owed servitude to a party through the agency of United States 
officials and the Freedmen's Bureau." But can Mr. Hendricks 
give any possible reason why the negro should have voted with 
the Democratic party at that thne ? Does not the record of 
Mr. Hendricks himself as the leader of the Democratic party 
in the Senate show the most conclusive reasons why the negro 
should have voted witli the Republicans ? 

Mr. Hendricks argued and voted in the Senate against eman- 
cipating the negro from helpless slavery ; when made free, Mr. 
Hendricks argued and voted against making him a citizen; 
citizenship conferred, Mr. Plendricks argued and voted against 
bestowing suffrage ; and he argued and voted against confer- 
ring upon the negro the most ordinary civil rights, even in- 
veighing in the Senate against giving to colored men who were 
eligible to seats in Congress the simple privilege of a seat in 
the horse-cars of Washington in common with white men. 
If we concede to the negro the ordinary instincts and preju- 
dices of human nature, it must have required the combined 
and energetic action of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Federal 
officers and the United States Army to hold him back from his 
impulsive and irrepressible desire to vote with Mr. Hendricks 
and the Democratic party ! 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT. 289 

I do not use this argumentum ad liominem in any personal or 
offensive sense toward Mr. Hendricks. His position was not 
different from his associates and his followers in the Demo- 
cratic i)arty on all the questions where I have referred to his 
votes and his speeches. Mr. Lamar occupied the same ground 
practically ; so did Mr, Stephens and Governor Hampton. 
Indeed, the entire Democratic party opposed legislation for 
the amelioration of the negro's condition at every step, and 
opposed it not with the mere registry of negative votes, but 
with an energetic hostility that too often assumed the phase 
of anger and acrimony. Emancipation from slavery, grant of 
citizenship and civil rights, conferring of suffrage, were all 
carried for the negro by the Republicans against a protesting 
and resisting Democracy. Democratic senators and representa- 
tives in Congress fought all these measures with unflagging 
zeal. In State Legislatures, on the stump, in the partisan 
press, through all the agencies that influence and direct public 
opinion, the Democrats showed implacable hostility to each 
and every step that was taken toward elevating the negro to a 
better condition. It was inevitable therefore that the negro 
who had sense enough to feel that he was free, who had percep- 
tion enough to know that he was a citizen, who had pride 
enough to realize that he was a voter, felt and knew and real- 
ized that these great enfranchisements had been conferred upon 
him by the persistent energy of the Republican party, and in 
spite of the efforts of an embittered and united Democracy. Is 
further statement necessary to explain why the negro should 
have cast his vote for the Republican party when a free ballot 
was in his hands ? It can be readily understood why he may 
now cast a vote for the Democratic party when he is no longer 
allowed freedom of choice, when he is no longer master of his 
own ballot. 

It must be borne in mind that the Republicans were urged 
and hastened to measures of amelioration for the negro by 
very dangerous developments in the Southern States looking 
to his re-enslavement, in fact if not in form. The year that 
followed the accession of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency 
was full of anxiety and of warning to all lovers of justice, 
to all who hoped for " a more perfect union " of the States. 



290 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS, 

111 nearly every one of the Confederate States the white in- 
habitants assumed that they were to be restored to the Union 
with Iheir State governments precisely as they were when they 
seceded in 18(31, and that the organic change created by the 
Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State 
legislation. In this belief they exhibited their policy toward 
the negro. Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard 
to find in history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a 
whole race than was embodied in the legislation of those 
revived and unreconstructed State governments. Their mem- 
bership was composed wholly of the '' ruling class," as they 
termed it, and in no small degree of Confederate officers beloAv 
the rank of brigadier-general, who sat in the Legislature in the 
very uniforms which had distinguished them as enemies of 
the Union upon the battle-field. Limited space forbids my 
transcribing the black code wherewith they loaded their stat- 
ute-books. In Mr. Lamar's State the negroes were forbidden, 
under very severe penalties, " to keep fire-arms of any kind ; " 
they were apprenticed, if minors, to labor; preference being 
given by the statute to their " former owners." Grown men 
and women were compelled to let their labor by contract, the 
decision of whose terms was wholly in the hands of the whites; 
and those who failed to contract were to be seized as "va- 
grants," heavily fined, and their labor sold by the sheriff at 
public outcry to the highest bidder. The terms "master" and 
"mistress" continually recur in the statutes, and the slavery 
that was thus instituted was of a more degrading, merciless, 
and mercenary type than that which was blotted out by the 
Thirteenth Amendment. 

South Carolina, whose moderation and justice are so highly 
praised by Governor Hampton, enacted a code still more cruel 
than that I have quoted from Mississippi. Fire-arms Avere for- 
bidden to the negro, and any violation of the statute was pun- 
ished by " a fine equal to twice the value of the weapon so 
unlawfully kept," and, "if that be not immediately paid, by 
corporeal punishment." It was further provided that " no per- 
son of color shall pursue or practice the art, trade, or business 
of an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper, or any other trade or 
employment (besides that of husbandry or that of a servant 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT. 291 

under contract for labor), until he sliall have obtained a license 
from the Judge of the District Court, which license shall be 
good for one year only." If the license was granted to the 
negro to be a shopkeeper or peddler, he was compelled to pay 
one hundred dollars per annum for it, and if he pursued the 
rudest mechanical calling he could do so only by the payment 
of a license fee of ten dollars per annum. No such fees were 
exacted of the whites, or of free blacks during the era of 
slavery. The negro was thus hedged in on all sides ; he was 
down and he was to be kept down, and the chivalric race that 
denied him a fair and honest competition in the humblest 
mechanical pursuits were loud in their assertions of his inferior- 
ity and his incompetency. 

But it was reserved for Louisiana to outdo both South Caro- 
lina and Mississippi in this infamous legislation. In that State 
all agricultural laborers were compelled to make labor contracts 
tluring the iirst ten days of January, for the next year. The 
contract once made, the laborer was not to be allowed to leave 
his place of employment during the year except upon conditions 
not likely to occur and easily prevented. The master was 
allowed to make deductions of the servants' wages for "injuries 
done to animals and agricultural implements committed to his 
care," thus making the negroes responsible for wear and tear. 
Deductions were to be made for '•' bad or negligent work," the 
master being the judge. For every act of "disobedience " a fine 
of one dollar was imposed on the offender ; disobedience being 
a technical term made to include, besides " neglect of duty," 
and " leaving home without permission," such fearful offenses 
as "impudence," or "swearing," or "indecent language in the 
presence of the employer, his family, or agent," or " quarreling 
or fighting with one another." The master or his agent might 
assail every ear with profaneness aimed at the negro men, and 
outrage every sentiment of decency in the foul language ad- 
dressed to the negro women ; but if one of the helpless crea- 
tures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should 
answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with 
an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the 
cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The " agent " 
referred to in the statute is the well-known overseer of the 



292 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

cotton region, and the care with which the hxw-makers of Lou- 
isiana provided that his delicate ears and sensitive nerves sliould 
not be offended with an oath or an indecent word from a negro 
will be appreciatett by all Avho have heard the crack of the whip 
on a Southern plantation. 

It is impossible to quote all tlie liideous provisions of these 
statutes, under whose operation the negro would have relapsed 
gradually and surely into actual and admitted slavery. Kindred 
legislation was attempted in a large majority of the Confederate 
States, and it is not uncharitable or illogical to assume that the 
ultimate re-enslavement of the race was the fixed design of 
those who framed the laws, and of those who attempted to 
enforce them. 

I am not speculating as to what would have been done or 
might have been done in the Southern States if the National 
Government had not intervened. I have quoted what actually 
was done by Legislatures under the control of Southern Demo- 
crats, and I am only recalling facts when I say that those 
outrages against human nature were upheld by the Democratic 
party of the country. All the Democrats whose articles I am 
reviewing were in various degrees, active or passive, principal 
or endorser, parties to this legislation ; and the fixed determi- 
nation of the Republican party to thwart it and destroy it 
evoked all the anathemas of Democratic wrath. It was just 
at this point that the Republican party was compelled to decide 
whether the emancipated slave should be protected by National 
power or handed over to his late master to be dealt with in 
the spirit of the enactments I have quoted. 

To restore the Union on a safe foundation, to re-establish law 
and promote order, to insure justice and equal rights to all, the 
RepubUcan party was forced to its Reconstruction policy. To 
hesitate in its adoption was to invite and confirm the statutes of 
wrong and cruelty to which I have referred. The first step 
taken was to submit the Fourteenth Amendment, giving citizen- 
ship and civil rights to the negro, and forbidding that he be 
counted in the basis of representation unless he should be reck- 
oned among the voters. The Southern States could have been 
readily re-admitted to all their powers and privileges in the 
Union by accepting the Fourteenth Amendment, and negro 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT. 293 

suffrage would not have been forced upon them. The gradual 
and conservative method of training the negroes for franchise, 
as suggested and approved by Governor Hampton, had many 
advocates among Republicans in the North ; and, though in my 
judgment it would have proved delusive and impracticable, it 
was quite within the power of the South to secure its adoption 
or at least its trial. 

But the States lately in insurrection rejected the Fourteenth 
Amendment with apparent scorn and defiance. In the Legisla- 
tures of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, it did not receive a 
single vote ; in South Carolina it received only one vote ; in 
Virginia only one ; in Texas it received five votes ; in Arkansas 
two votes ; in Alabama ten ; in North Carolina eleven ; and in 
Georgia, where Mr. Stephens boasts that they gave suffrage to 
the negro in advance of the Fifteenth Amendment, only two 
votes could be found in favor of making the negro even a 
citizen. It would have been more candid in Mr. Stephens if 
he had stated that it was the Legislature assembled under 
the Reconstruction Act that gave suffrage to the negro in 
Georgia, and that the unreconstructed Legislature, which had 
his endorsement and sympathies, and which elected him to the 
United States Senate, not only refused suffrage to the negro, 
but loaded him with grievous disabilities, and passed a criminal 
code of barbarous severity for his punishment. 

It is necessary to a clear apprehension of the needful facts in 
this discussion to remember events in the i:)roper order of time. 
The Fourteenth Amendment was submitted to the States June 
13, 1866. In the autumn of that year, or very early in 1867, 
the Legislatures of all the insurrectionary States except Ten- 
nessee had rejected it. Thus and then the question was 
forced upon us, whether the Congress of the United States, 
composed wholly of men who had been loyal to the Govern- 
ment, or the Legislatures of the Rebel States, composed wholly 
of men who had been disloyal to the Government, should 
determine the basis on which their relations to the Union 
should be resumed. In such a crisis the Republican party 
could not hesitate : to halt, indeed, would have been an 
abandonment of the principles on which the war had been 
fought ; to surrender to the Rebel Legislatures would have 



294 POLITICAL DLSCUSSIONS. 

been cowardly <lcsertion of its loyal friends, and a base betrayal 
of the Union canse. 

Thus, in March, 18G7, after and because of the rejection 
of the Fourteenth .Amendment by Southern Legislatures, Con- 
gress i)assed the Iieconstruction Act. This was the origin of 
negro suffrage. The Southern whites knowingly and willfully 
brought it upon themselves. The Reconstruction Act would 
never have been demanded had the Southern States accepted 
the Fourteenth Amendment in good faith. But that amend- 
ment contained so many provisions demanded by considerations 
of great national ])olicy, that its adoption became an absolute 
necessity. Those who controlled the Federal Government 
would have been recreant to their plainest duty, if they had 
permitted the power of these States to be wielded by disloyal 
hands against the measures deemed essential to the security of 
the Union. To have destroyed the rebellion ou the battle-field, 
and then permit it to seize the power of eleven States and 
prevent all changes in the organic law necessary to avert 
future rebellions, would have been a weak and wicked conclu- 
sion to the grandest contest ever waged for human rights and 
for constitutional liberty. 

Negro suffrage being thus made a necessity by the obduracy 
of those who were in control at the South, the Fifteenth 
Amendment became the next and the logical step to be taken. 
Nothing could have been more despicable than to use the 
negroes to secure the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, 
and then leave them exposed to the hazard of losing suffrage 
whenever those who had attempted to re-enslave them should 
regain political power in their States. Hence the Fifteenth 
Amendment — which never pretended to guarantee universal 
suffrage, but simply forbade that any man should lose his vote 
because he had once been a slave, or because his face might be 
black, or because his remote ancestors came from Africa. 

It is matter of sincere congratulation that, after all the con- 
tests of the past thirteen years, four eminent leaders of the 
Democratic party should unite in approving negro suffrage. It 
will not, I trust, be considered cynical, certainly not offensive, 
if I venture to suggest that this Democratic harmony on the 
Republican side of a long contest has been developed just at the 



NEGRO ENFKANCHISEMENT. 295 

time when many causes have conspired to render negro suffrage 
in the South powerless against the Democratic party. Even in 
districts where the negro vote is four to one, compared with 
the whites, the Democrats readily elect the Representatives to 
Congress. I do not recall any Avarm approval of negro suffrage 
by a Democratic leader so long as the negro was able to elect 
one of his own race or a white Republican. But when his 
numbers have been overborne by violence, when his white 
friends have been driven into exile, when murder has been just 
frequent enough to intimidate the voting majority, and when 
negro suffrage as a political power has been destroyed, we find 
leading minds in the Democratic party applauding and uphold- 
ing it. So lately as Feb. 19, 1872, years after negro suffrage was 
adopted and while it was still a power in the Southern States, 
such influential and prominent Democrats as Mr. Bayard of 
Delaware, and Mr. Beck of Kentucky, united in an official 
report to Congress, wherein they declared, regarding negro suf- 
frage, that " there can be no permanent partition of power nor 
any peaceable joint exercise of power among such discordant 
bodies of men. One or the other must liave all or 7ione. . . . 
Pseudo-philanthropists," continued Mr. Bayard and Mr. Beck, 
"may talk never so loudly about 'equality before the law,' 
where equality is not found in the great natural law of race 
ordained by the Creator." Mr. Beck and Mr. Bayard made 
this report when fresh from protracted intercourse with South- 
ern Democratic leaders, and it will not be denied that in their 
expressions they fully represented the opinions of their party 
at that time. Will it be offensive if I again ask, what has 
changed the views of Democrats except the overthrow of free 
suffrage ? So long as the negro can furnish thirty-five Repre- 
sentatives and thirty-five Electors to the South, his suffrage 
will be upheld in name, and so long as the Democratic party is 
dominant it will be destroyed in fact. 

Mr. Hendricks is a conspicuous convert. The negro is 
washed and made white in his eyes as soon as he votes the 
Democratic ticket. He is greatly affected by the fact that 
negroes " helped to bury a Democratic Congressman whom they 
had helped to elect." In this simple incident Mr. Hendricks 
finds great evidence of restored kindliness between the races. 



296 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Was there ever a time when the colored people refused to show 
respect to the whites, living or dead? The evidence would 
have been stronger if an instance had been quoted of white 
men paying respect to a deceased negro. But, unhappily, if 
funeral incidents are to be cited, Mr. Hendricks will find more 
than he cares to quote. Almost at the moment of his writing, 
testimony was given before a Senate Committee in Louisiana 
not only of the murder of two negroes for the sin of being 
Republicans, but of their being left without sepulture, and 
actually devoured by hogs on the highway ! Their remains — 
the phrase is doubly significant in this case — were finally cov- 
ered with earth by some negro women, the negro men having 
all fled from their white persecutors. 

Mr. Hendricks's high praise of the governments of South Caro- 
lina and Louisiana, since they fell under Democratic control, is 
not justified by the facts. Where he speaks of Rei)ublicans 
connected with the government of South Carolina " meeting 
their punishment in prison and seeking their safety in flight, " 
he provokes an easy retort. One of these men, an ex-Congress- 
man, was sent to prison on disgracefully insufficient evidence, 
the judge delivering a bitter partisan harangue when he charged 
the jury to convict. Governor Hampton, to his credit be it 
said, pardoned him, and it would have been still more to his 
credit if he had pardoned him more promptly. In another case 
the Executive of a great Commonwealth refused Governor 
Hampton's requisition, on the ground that the man was not 
wanted for the cause and the crime alleged. These criminal 
charges have in many cases borne the appearance of mere polit- 
ical persecutions, in which the victims are not the persons most 
dishonored. 

On the other hand, when South Carolinians by the hundred 
were indicted for interfering with the freedom of elections in 
killing negroes by the score, it was found impossible to convict 
one of them. Against the clearest and most overwhelming evi- 
dence, these murderers were allowed to go free, and the prose- 
cutions were abandoned. South Carolina courts appear to be 
•' organized to convict " wlien a Republican is on trial, and 
South Carolina juries impaneled to acquit when Democrats are 
charged with crime. 



NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT. 297 

In the opinion of Mr. Hendricks, Louisiana under Republi- 
can control was the very worst of all the Southern govern- 
ments. A change was made in April, 1877, and since then the 
Democratic party has held undisputed power in that State. 
When the Republicans surrendered the State there was a sur- 
plus of $300,000 in its treasury ; taxes were collected, credit 
maintained, and interest on its public securities promptly and 
faithfully paid. To-day, after twenty-one months of Demo- 
cratic government, according to public and undenied report, 
the State is bankrupt ; its taxes are uncollected ; its treasury is 
empty; nearly half a million overdrawn on its fiscal agent; 
the interest on its public debt unpaid, and its most sacred obli- 
gations are protested and dishonored. If such decadence had 
happened in a State under Republican rule — succeeding a 
prosj^erous Democratic administration — the denunciations of 
Mr. Hendricks might have been fittingly applied. 

My conclusions on the topic under discussion are : — 

Firsts Slavery having been Constitutionally abolished by the 
adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, the question of suffrage 
was unsettled. But it may be safely affirmed that the Repub- 
licans had no original design of interfering with the control 
which the States had always exercised on that question. 

Second., The loyal men who had conducted the war to a 
victorious end were not willing that those who had rebelled 
against the Union should come back with political power vastly 
increased beyond that which they had wielded in the days of 
pro-slavery domination; hence they proposed the Fourteenth 
Amendment, practically basing representation in Congress 
upon the voting population — the same for North and South. 

Third., Instead of accepting the Fourteenth Amendment, 
the insurrectionary States scornfull}^ rejected it, and claimed 
the light to settle for themselves the terms on which they 
would resume relations with the Union. They forthwith pro- 
ceeded to nullify the Thirteenth Amendment by adopting a 
series of " black laws " which remanded the negro to a worse 
servitude than that from which he had been emancipated. 

Fourth, When the Government, administered by loyal hands, 
found it impossible to secure the necessary guaranties for 
future safety from the "ruling" or rebel class of the South, 



298 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

they demanded and enforced a Reconstrnction policy in which 
loyalty should assert its rights. Hence the negro was admitted 
to suffrage. 

Fiftlu The negro having aided by loyal votes in securing 
the great guaranties of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Repub- 
licans declared that he should not afterward be deprived of 
suffrage on account of race or color. Hence the Fifteenth 
Amendment. 

Sixth, So long as the negro vote was effective in the South 
in defeating the Democracy, the leaders of that party de- 
nounced and opposed it. They withdraw their opposition just 
at the moment when, by fraud, intimidation, violence, and 
murder, free suffrage on the part of the negro in the South is 
faially impaired ; by which I mean that the negro is not 
allowed to vote freely where his vote can defeat and elect. 
As a minority voter in Democratic districts he is not disturbed. 

Seventh, The answer often made, that, compared with the 
whole number of Congressional districts in the South, only 
a small number are disturbed, is not apposite, and does not 
convey the truth. For it is only in the districts where the 
negroes make a strong and united effort that violence is needed, 
and there it is generally found. Thus it is said that only in a 
comparatively few parishes of Louisiana was there any disturb- 
ance at the late election. But the Democrats contrived to 
have a disturbance at the points where it was necessary to over- 
come a large Republican vote, and of course had no disturbance 
where there was no resistance. It Avill generally be found that 
the violence occurs in districts where the Republicans have a 
rightful majority. 

Elyhtli, As the matter stands, all violence in the South 
inures to the benefit of one political party. That party is 
counting upon its accession to power and its rule over the 
country for a series of years by reason of the great number of 
electoral votes which it wrongfully gains. Financial credit, 
commercial enterprises, manufacturing industries, may all pos- 
sibly pass under the control of the Democratic party by reason 
of its unlawful seizure of political power in the South. Our 
institutions have been tried by the fiery test of war, and have 
survived. It remains to be seen whether the attempt to govern 



NEGRO p:nfraxciiisj:ment. 299 

the country by the power of a " Solid South," unlawfully 
consolidated, can be successful. 

No thoughtful man can consider these questions without 
deep concern. The mighty power of a republic of fifty mil- 
lions of people — with a continent for their possession — can 
only be wielded permanently by being wielded honestly. In 
a fair and generous struggle for partisan power let us not 
forget those issues and those ends which are above party. 
Organized wrong will ultimately be met by organized resist- 
ance. The sensitive and dangerous point is in the casting and 
the counting of free ballots. Impartial suffrage is our theory. 
It must become our practice. Any party of American citizens 
can bear to be defeated. No party of American citizens will 
bear to be defrauded. The men who are interested in a dis- 
honest count are units. The men who are interested in an hon- 
est count are millions. I wish to speak for the millions of all 
political parties, and in their name to declare that the Repub- 
lic must be strong enough, and shall be strong enough, to 
protect the weakest of its citizens in all their rights. 



300 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



ENCOURAGEMENT TO AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING 
AND THE REVIVAL OF AMERICAN COMMERCE 
ON THE OCEAN. 



[Speech delivered in the United States Senate Jan. 27, 1881, hy .James G. 
Blaine, in reply to the speech of Senator Beck of Kentucky, in favor of admit- 
ting foreign-built ships to American register free of duty.] 

Mr. President, — If the Senate will indulge me I wonkl 
be glad to sj^eak very briefly on the various points suggested 
by the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck], who has just closed 
a remarkable speech. I should not like to have such a speech 
as he has delivered go out from the Senate of the United States 
unanswered even for a single day, and I propose, therefore, to 
review his position, at least in part. I regret that I am com- 
pelled to speak without preparation, with no data except such 
as I recall from memory. 

The first observation I desire to make is that the honorable 
senator from Kentucky frankly admits that the policy he advo- 
cates looks to a permanent dependence of the United States 
upon England for ships. The only and slight attempt that 
the senator made to rebut the conclusion was in the faint 
hope expressed by him that the repair-shops which would spring 
up on this side of the water might develop into machine-shops 
and ship-yards large enough and numerous enough to construct 
steam-vessels ; but throughout the entire argument of the sena- 
tor he went upon the jjresumption, which I repeat he did not 
even attempt himself to rebut, that his policy proclaimed a per- 
manent dependence of this country upon England for a mer- 
chant marine. I do not believe the Senate of the United States 
or the Congress of the United States or the people of the United 
States are ready to approve that policy. 

It is a remarkable fact that for the past twenty-five years — 



AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING. 301 

or make it only for the past twenty years, from the beginning 
of the war to this hour — the Congress of the United States has 
not done one solitary thing to uphold the navigation interests 
of the United States. Decay has been observed going steadily 
on from year to year. The great march forward of our com- 
mercial rival of old has been everywhere recognized, and the 
representatives of the people of the United States have sat in 
their two houses of legislation as dumb as though they could 
not speak, and have not offered aid or suggested remed\ . 
This has gone on until now the honorable senator from Ken- 
tucky rises in his seat and proposes to make a proclamation 
of perpetual future dependence upon England for such ship- 
ping as we may require, holding up to us as models Germany, 
Italy, and the other European countries that are as absolutely 
dependent upon Great Britain for their steamships as the 
District of Columbia is upon Congress for its legislation. 

During these years, in which Congress has not stepped for- 
ward to do one thing for the carrying-trade of the country, for 
all that vast external transportation whose importance the 
senator from Kentucky has not exaggerated but has strongly 
depicted, the same Congress has passed ninety-two acts in aid of 
internal transportation by rail, has given 200,000,000 acres of the 
public lands, worth to-day a thousand million dollars in money, 
and has added $70,000,000 in cash, and yet, I repeat, it has 
scarcely extended the aid of a single dollar to build up our foreign 
commerce. An energetic and able man^ who found a great 
ocean highway unoccupied, and had the enterprise to put Ameri- 
can vessels of the best construction and great power upon it, has 
been held up to scorn and to reproach because he came to the 
American Congress and said, " If you will do for this enterprise 
what the Emperor of Brazil will do, I will give you a great line 
of steamships from New York to Rio Janeiro." The Emperor of 
Brazil had said to this enterprising man, " My Government will 
pay you a hundred thousand dollars a year if you will establish 
and maintain this line;" and New England senators, I regret 
to say, senators who represent the protective system of this 
country, remarked with quiet complacency, " If Brazil is willing 

1 John Eoach of New York, an Irisliinau by birth, long a citizen of the United 
States; a man of remarkable ability, energy and integrity. 



302 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

to pay for the line, we need not." Brazil naturally enough has 
got tired paying all and we paying none. Just as soon as it 
Avas found that we would not pay, a combination of English 
ship-builders said, " We will put on our ships and run that 
American line off; we will carry the coffee of Brazil to the 
United States for nothing ; we will break down this attempt of 
the United States to begin a race upon the ocean ; " and they 
have pretty nearly succeeded, while we have looked on witli 
apparent unconcern, and by our indifference have even favored 
the efforts of the Euglish line. 

During the Avhole of Great Britain's mastery of the sea, 
while she has been seeking every line on which a steamer could 
Hoat, she has never put on lines to carry from an American 
port to any foreign ports, but only to her own. You cannot 
get a British and South American steamship line except on 
the triangular system. They will go from New York to Liv- 
erpool taking breadstuffs or cotton, from Liverpool to Rio 
Janeiro taking British fabrics, from Rio Janeiro to .New York 
bringing coffee and dye-woods ; but when the proposition is 
made that they shall go back from New York to Rio, they 
decline because they do not want to interfere with the pros- 
perity of England at home by furnishing transportation to any 
point for American fabrics in competition with British fabrics. 
The result will be that if this American line to Brazil shall be 
taken off", as in all probability it will be if the Linited States 
extends no aid, then letters from the United States, letters of 
the merchants of New York and Philadelphia and Baltimore 
and Boston, will be conveyed to Rio Janeiro via Liverpool and 
reach that point over two great lines of British steamships. 

Mr. President, the frank admission of the honorable senator 
from Kentucky takes away a large part of the argument which 
I thought I should have to make, and which was to prove that 
if the United States to-day is incompetent to compete with 
Great Britain in the manufacture of iron ships, and if we 
admit iron ships from Great Britain absolutely free of duty, 
we shall be still more incompetent to do it next year. It 
requires, in the language of the trade, a great "plant" to 
build steamships. It requires a large investment of money, 
numerous machine-shops and powerful machinery. If in addi- 



AMERICAN SIITP-BUILDING. 303 

tion to what has been clone abroad to build up English ship- 
yards we now pour into them all the patronage froin this 
country, I should like the honorable senator from Kentucky or 
any other senator to tell me exactly at what point of time it 
will come to pass that any feeble effort on this side will begin 
to compete with those great Britisli ship-yards. If you abandon 
ship-buikling this year because you are unable, you will be far 
more unable next year, you Avill be still less able the year en- 
suing, and every year will add to the monopoly of British power 
in that respect and to the absolute weakness and prostration 
of American power in competition. But the frank admission by 
the honorable senator from Kentucky of tlie future and per- 
petual dependence upon England removes the necessity of 
arguing that point. He admits it with all its damaging force. 

Mr. President, /«s est ah lioste doeeri. Great Britain has been 
our great commercial rivaL How has she succeeded? Since 
the first Cunard steamship sailed into Boston Harbor, now about 
forty years ago, down to the close of 1878, Great Britain had 
paid from her treasury to aid her steamship lines a sum exceed- 
ing forty million pounds sterling — more than two hundred 
millions of American dollars. She began this policy with great 
wisdom at the moment she foresaw that the steamship was 
to play so commanding a part in the navigation of the great 
oceans. I know it is a favorite argument with those who 
occupy the position of the honorable senator from Kentucky 
that Great Britain started upon the plan of subsidizing her 
ocean lines, and followed it for a long period of years, and 
afterward abandoned it. Sir, she has never abandoned it. 
She has abandoned subsidy only to those lines that are strong 
enough to go alone, and the British post-office report for the 
year 1879 shows that under the despised head of postal aid, 
to which the senator from Kentucky was pleased to refer with 
sneers, Great Britain paid last year <£ 783,000, well-nigh four 
million dollars in coin to her lines that need help. 

France obtains her steamships from England. France has 
adopted the commercial policy which the honorable senator 
from Kentucky thinks would be the revival of the American 
shipping interest ; but does France by the mere fact of getting 
her ships built at Birkenhead or on the Clyde abandon the plan, 



304 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

which has been for thirty years in operation under her gov- 
ernment, of aiding her ships? Last year, sir, France paid 
23,000,000 francs — more than four and a half million dollars — 
to aid her steamship lines. When the celebrated line of France, 
the company known as Mossageries Imjj^riale, competed too 
sharply in the Mediterranean after the opening of the Suez 
Canal, with the Peninsular and Oriental Company of Eng- 
land and was likely to endanger its supremacy. Great Britain 
promptly stepped forward and added ii!500,000 to the Penin- 
sular and Oriental subsidy. That is the way Great Britain has 
abandoned the idea of aiding her great commercial interests I 

Italy, hemmed in upon the Mediterranean, with a territory 
that does not touch either of the great oceans, is iadvancing 
rapidly in steam-navigation. Italy last year paid $^1, 600,000 
to her lines ; and even Austria, that enjoys but a single sea- 
port on the upper end of the Adriatic, pays $500,000 toward 
stimulating commercial ventures from Trieste. Sir, the United 
States cannot succeed in this great international struggle with- 
out adopting exactly the same mode that has achieved victory 
for France. What is it? It is not to help A B or C D or E F 
or anybody else by name, neither Mr. John Roach, nor Mr. 
John Doe nor Mr. Richard Roe, but to make a great and com- 
prehensive policy that shall give to every company a pledge 
of aid from the Government of so much per mile for such a 
term of years. Let the American merchants feel that the 
Government of the United States is behind them. Let the 
United States take from her treasury per annum the four 
millions of dollars that Great Britain is paying as a postscript 
to her $200,000,000 of investment ; let the United States but 
take $4,000,000 j^er annum — and that is not a great sum for 
tliis opulent country — let that be used as a fund to stimulate 
steamship companies from any port of the United States to any 
foreign port on the globe, and I venture to predict that you 
will see that long deferred, much desired event, the revival of 
the American merchant marine. 

Let us do one thing more where England has pointed the way 
for us. We have nine navy-yards, without a navy. If we will 
put the expense of those navy-yards into the building up of 
great private ship-yards, it will form subsidy enough — if that 



AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING. 305 

hated word will not offend the delicate ears of my friend from 
Kentucky — it will aiford aid enough, if that be more to his 
taste ; it will give help enough, in conjunction with the saving 
on the construction of naval vessels, to carry out a comprehen- 
sive scheme for the revival of American navigation. 

We not only withhold our hands from any aid to the Ameri- 
can merchant marine, but we keep up the shadow of a shell 
of a navy on the most expensive basis possible. Great Britain 
T believe never had more than three navy-yards for all her vast 
work of construction and repair. We support nine navy-j'ards. 
The navy of Great Britain is fifteen times as large really, as 
ours is nominally. 

Mr. President, we have the largest ocean frontage of any 
nation on the globe. We front all continents. We border 
the two great oceans, the greatest of gulfs on the South, the 
Arctic Sea beyond the Straits of Behring. We are necessarily 
by our position in need of a navy. 

The honorable senator from Kentucky has apparently given 
this subject wide and deep attention, and I shall be glad to 
be informed at his own convenience how, after he has brought 
this country to a state of absolute dependence upon Great 
Britain for our mercantile marine, he proposes to uphold our 
navy, how he proposes to build the vessels, where he will be 
able to secure his ship-carpenters? I do not speak of the 
sailors; we can hire them from the outside world. But how 
does he propose to retain among our people the art of build- 
ing ocean-going steamers when his policy absolutely transfers 
the whole of the business at once to English ship-yards ? 

1 do not expect this Congress to do any thing. I am not 
talking with the slightest hope of success. But I know success 
will come sometime. I know that the scheme of the honorable 
senator from Kentucky, even if Congress should adopt it, would 
disappoint everybody. It would disappoint everybody except 
the English ship-builder. It would not disappoint him. Yet 
I venture to say it would not be followed as the honorable 
senator thinks by large American investments in British ships. 

It opens no possible temptation to a man desiring to invest 
in navigation to say to him, " You may go abroad, to England, 
and buy a vessel and bring her to New York and we will allow 



306 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

you to register her at the custom-house, and you may float the 
American flag." — " No, I thank you," the shrewd investor re- 
plies. "If I do that I shall have more taxation than I shall 
have in Liverpool or Bristol. I prefer to keep the registry over 
there," just as the Williams & Guion line does. There are 
men in New York deriving dividends from that line just as 
there are men in Philadelphia deriving dividends from the 
Philadelphia line that is partly made up of British vessels. The 
very moment you disconnect the idea of a National marine and 
the building of it here, the very moment you put it down on 
the simple basis of dollars and cents, regardless of any thing 
American in it, then there is no temptation whatever, and you 
offer no extra inducement by saying that the vessel may be 
registered here, not the slightest in the world, and it would not 
be done. When the senator from Kentucky holds up the bril- 
liant prospect that the repair-shops might be the germ of a 
future marine, he abandons, in effect if not in intention, all 
idea of building ships on this side of the water. 

This subject, Mr. President, never can be considered and 
decided intelligently, as ultimately it must be, without taking 
into account the naval establishment of the United States and 
the mercantile marine of the United States at the same time. 
The naval establishment must be the outgrowth of the mercan- 
tile marine, just as it always has been, just as it always will be ; 
and where you have no mercantile marine out of which to grow 
a navy, you will have no navy. As recently as the beginning 
of the late war the maritime States of this Union were able to 
provide, in that great struggle, seven thousand competent offi- 
cers of the various grades of the volunteer navy, and to put on 
the decks of the blockading fleet seventy thousand American 
sailors. The senator from Kentucky said, and I think justly, 
that too much had been made or attempted to be made out of 
the fact that a few vessels had been taken by blockade-runners 
and destroyed, and others friglitened into registry abroad ; and 
that many were dating the downfall of the American mercantile 
marine from that cause. That was indeed one cause, but I 
agree with the senator that it was not by any means the prin- 
cij)al cause. I agree with him that it was a coincident cause 
merely. 



AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING. 307 

Another cause was set in operation about that time of which 
the commercial world at least has taken great heed. Up to that 
date steam-vessels had not been good freighters. The side- 
wheel steamer that did business between this country and 
Europe was not a great carrying-vessel ; she required too much 
coal ; her engine took up too much space. But in the midst 
of our war, by a succession of inventions — partly American 
and partly British — there was a complete revolution effected 
in ocean-going steamers, and that revolution can best be 
described by stating this formula : — prior to that date a vessel 
of 3,000 tons on a voyage of given length had to make 2,200 
tons allowance for coal and machinery, and only 800 tons 
for freight, while now it is precisely reversed, and they can 
take 800 tons only for coal and machinery and 2,200 tons for 
freight. This is the revolution of which Great Britain has had 
the advantage and it is often confused with that other cause 
from which we suffered by reason of the war. But the senator 
from Kentucky is correct in stating that the destruction of the 
vessels during the civil struggle, large as it was estimated at 
the time and grievous as was the calamity to individuals and to 
the country, was not the great principal cause which brought 
about the revolution from sailing-vessels to the steam-marine. 

The carrying-capacity of an ocean-going steamer is something 
surprising to men who have not examined it. The first steamer 
of the John Roach line, so called — and the steamers are by no 
means as large as those of the Cunard and White Star lines sail- 
ing between Liverpool and New York — the very first steamer 
that sailed from New York to Rio, besides an assorted cargo, 
which in a manifest would seem to be more than could be put 
in the hold of the vessel, carried also twenty thousand barrels 
of flour. It seems almost incredible when you think of the 
freight-ears whicli that cargo would require if carried by rail. 
The freight of two hundred cars, one hundred l)arrels to the car, 
was placed in the hold of that vessel. It is in this respect that 
these vessels have gained so enormously in the carrying-trade. 

It is idle to fight against the inventions of the world : it is 
idle for us to fold our arms and suppose that wooden vessels are 
to maintain the importance they have hitherto held in the com- 
merce of the world. I think I understand something of that 



308 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

subject. I have the honor to be from tlie State that has built 
more ocean-going wooden vessels than all the rest of this Union 
beside, I believe. Within thirty miles of my own residence is 
a town of only ten thousand people which is the largest wooden 
ship-building place on the globe to-day. While the days of 
wooden ships are by no means over, while they will be a great 
and needful auxiliary to the steamers of iron and steel engaged 
in the commerce of the world, yet it is manifest, is indeed 
already proven, that the great highways of international com- 
merce, such as the North Atlantic, the West India seas, the 
routes from our Pacific coast to South America, to Asia and to 
Australia, will be occupied, and occupied almost to the exclu- 
sion of sailing-vessels, by ocean steamers. The people of the 
United States can take a great part in that race ; they can 
take a great part in it whenever they make up their mind 
that the instrumentality by which England conquered is the 
one which they must use ; they can take it whenever they 
make up their minds that a mercantile marine and a naval 
establishment must grow and go together hand in hand, and 
that the Congress of the United States is derelict in its duty 
if it passes another naval appropriation bill without accom- 
panying it with some wise and forecasting provision looking 
also to the upbuilding of the American merchant marine. 

What the honorable senator from Kentucky was pleased to 
say in regard to the protective system and its horrible crimes I 
have no time to answer. The unfortunate venture which was 
made in the late campaign on that subject had its origin in 
Kentuck}^ ; and if the honorable senator is merely trying to 
gloss over the remarkable blunder that somehow or other crept 
into the Cincinnati platform through the agency of a brilliant 
Kentuckian I have no special desire to reply to him. I concede 
to him, rather I think he will concede to me, that politically it 
was a blunder, and all the efforts of the distinguished military 
hero who ran as the candidate of the Democratic party to get 
back to the protection platform only ended in making that 
which was before serious end in a half farce. 

Mr. President, I say to the upholders of protection — and the 
election showed that the overwhelming public opinion of this 
country is interested in keeping up American manufactures 



AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING. 309 

against foreign manufactures — I say to them that Protection 
cannot be permanently maintained without building up the 
commercial marine of this country. If any of the gibes and 
taunts which the senator from Kentucky so freely distributed 
to the manufacturing interests of the country in his remarks 
shall come to the notice of and shall arouse the men in New 
England and elsewhere who are enjoying the benefits of a pro- 
tective tariff, to the necessity of extending the strong arm of 
the Government to the upbuilding of its commercial marine, 
then those gibes and taunts will not have been addressed in 
vain, and I for one shall thank the honorable senator from 
Kentucky for that portion of his elaborate speech. 

Mr. Beck. ... I do not propose to answer now any of the 
political suggestions of the senator from Maine. I approved 
the plank, as I always have done, of a tariff for revenue. Mr. 
Watterson was right : it is true, honest, Democratic doctrine. 
In 1876, when the convention met at St. Louis, there was a 
plank in the Democratic platform stronger and more earnest 
than that inserted at Cincinnati in 1880, and we carried the 
country on it, although we were cheated out of the Presi- 
dency. . . . Nor do I propose to interfere with the coastwise 
trade of the country, which is to-day sixty per cent of all we 
have, and is a monopoly absolute, so much so that the ship- 
builders and ship-owners of Maine and elsewhere, all along our 
coasts on the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf, can 'charge 
our own people what they please without interference so far as 
foreign nations are concerned. I am content that they may have 
it, and sixty per cent of all we have in the shipping business 
seems to me to be monopoly enough ; even that is all wrong on 
principle. . . . 

Mr. Blaine. Mr. President, the senator from Kentucky has 
dwelt at considerable length upon the monopoly of the coasting- 
trade which is enjoyed by the United' States. He ought to 
know, and certainly does know, that the United States has 
been industriously engaged for the last twenty-five years in 
breaking down the coasting-trade. When the United States 
paid f 70,000,000 in constructing a railway across the continent, 
more than half of the profit of the coasting-trade of this coun- 
try was taken away, and the railways that have gone along the 



310 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

coast and up and down in various directions have reduced the 
coasting-trade of this country to a minimum as compared with 
what it was twenty-five or thirty years ago. The great nest of 
commerce which the lionorable senator thinks he leaves in the 
monopoly of the coasting-trade has been removed by the rail- 
way system which the Government of the United States has 
built up with a subsidy ten times as large as that which is. 
now required for the revival of the foreign carrying-trade. 

Wlien the lionorable senator from Kentucky desires that the 
steamships which are to do the traffic of this country shall be 
built abroad, he forgets an important fact, of the deepest inter- 
est to the laboring-man of America ; viz., that if you build a 
ship worth •!!500,000, there is less than $5,000 of raAv material 
in her, while more than $495,000 is paid for labor. The senator 
from Kentucky is therefore proposing legislation that will take 
this enormous employment of labor to the other side of the 
ocean, and expend large sums in foreign countries that should 
be paid to American mechanics at home. He forgets also that 
every steamship during the period of her service gives work to 
as large a number of men on shore as she does at sea. All this 
labor the honorable senator proposes to employ on the other side 
of the ocean. For adding to the commercial importance and 
the absolute monopoly of the British marine, we can safely trust 
the senator from Kentucky to suggest the most comprehensive 
and cd^'tain plan. 

The honorable senator, in the early part of his remarks, in 
maintaining that our ship-owners were handicapped by our 
Navigation Laws, said in illustration of his position that in 
Kentucky, where they raise and run fine horses, a man would 
be considered a fool to put one hundred and fifty pounds on the 
back of a race-horse against one that was running with only one 
hundred and ten. Oh, no, the senator from Kentucky does not 
propose to do that at all ! He simply proposes to withdraw 
the American horse from the race. 



DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY AND INTEROCEANIG 

CANAL. 



[The following dispatch from Mr. Blaine, Secretary of State, to James Russell 
Lowell, Minister at London, was also sent mutatis mutandis to other ministers 
of the United States in Europe.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, June 24, 1881. 

SiR^ — It has come under the observation of the President, 
through the current statements of the European press and 
other usual modes of communication, that the great Powers of 
Europe may be considering the subject of jointly guaranteeing 
the neutrality of the interoceanic canal now projected across 
the Isthmus of Panama. 

The United States recognizes a proper guarantee of neutrality 
as essential to the construction and successful operation of any 
highway across the Isthmus of Panama, and in the last genera- 
tion every step deemed requisite in the premises was taken by 
this Government. The necessity was foreseen and abundantly 
provided for, long in advance of any possible call for the actual 
exercise of power. 

In 1846 a memorable and important treaty was negotiated 
and signed between the United States of America and the 
Republic of New Granada, now the United States of Colombia. 
By the thirty-fifth article of that treaty, the United States in 
exchange for certain concessions, guaranteed "positively and 
efficaciously " the perfect neutrality of the Isthmus and of any 
interoceanic communications that might be constructed upon or 
over it for the maintenance of free transit from sea to sea ; and 

311 



312 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

also guaranteed the rights of sovereignty and property of the 
United States of Colombia over the territory of the Isthmus as 
included within the borders of the State of Panama. 

In the judgment of the President this guarantee, given by 
the United States of America, does not require re-enforcement,' 
or accession, or assent from any other Power. In more than 
one instance this Government has been called upon to vindicate 
the neutrality thus guaranteed, and no contingency is now 
foreseen or apprehended in which such vindication would not 
be within the power of this nation. 

There has never been the slightest doubt on the part of this 
Government as to the purpose or extent of the obligation then 
assumed, by which the United States became surety alike for 
the free transit of the world's commerce over whatever land- 
way or water-way might be opened from sea to sea, and for the 
protection of the territorial rights of Colombia from aggression 
or interference of any kind. Nor has there ever been room to 
question the full extent of the advantages and benefits, naturally 
due to its geographical position and political relations on the 
Western Continent, which the United States obtained from 
the owner of the Isthmian territory in exchange for that far- 
reaching and responsible guarantee. 

If the foreshadowed action of the European Powers should 
assume tangible shape, it would be well for you to bring to the 
notice of Lord Granville the provisions of the treaty of 1846, 
and especially of its thirty-fifth article, and to intimate to him 
that any movement, with the view of supplementing the guar- 
antee contained therein, would necessarily be regarded by this 
Government as an uncalled-for intrusion into a field where the 
local and general interests of the United States of America 
must be considered before the interests of any other Power save 
those of the United States of Colombia alone. That Republic 
has already derived and will continue to derive eminent advan- 
tages from the guarantee of this Government. 

The President deems it due to frankness to be still more ex- 
plicit on this subject, and to elucidate the views of the United 
States Government with somewhat of detail to the end that no 
uncertainty shall subsist as to the integrity of our motives or 
the distinctness of our aims. 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY — INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 313 

It is not the wish or the purpose of the • United States to 
interfere with any commercial enterprise in which the citizens 
or subjects of any foreign power may see fit to embark, under a 
lawful privilege. The fact that the stock and franchises of the 
Panama Canal or the Panama Railway are owned in Europe, 
either in whole or principally, is no more a subject of complaint 
on the part of the United States than is the circumstance that 
the stock of many of its own lines of railway is largely held 
abroad. Such ownership, with its attendant rights, is in the 
United States amply secured by the laws of the land, and on 
the Isthmus is doubly secured by the local laws of Colombia, 
under the guarantee of the United States. 

In time of peace, the United States does not seek exclusive 
privileges for American ships in respect to precedence or tolls 
through an interoceanic canal any more than it has sought 
like privileges for American goods in transit over the Panama 
Railway, under the control of an American corporation. The 
extent of the privileges of American citizens and American 
ships is measurable under the treaty of 1846 by those of Colom- 
bian citizens and ships. It would be our earnest desire and 
expectation to see the world's peaceful commerce enjoy the 
same just, liberal, and rational treatment. 

It is the political control of such a canal, as distinguished 
from its merely administrative or commercial regulation, of 
which the President feels called ujion to speak with directness 
and with emphasis. During any war to which the United States 
•of America or the United States of Colombia might be a party, 
the passage of armed vessels of a hostile nation through the 
canal at Panama would be no more admissible than would the 
passage of the armed forces of a hostile nation over the railway 
lines joining the Atlantic and Pacific shores of the United 
States or of Colombia. The United States of America will 
insist upon her right to take all needful precautions against a 
possibility that the Isthmus transit shall be in any event used 
offensively against her interests upon the land or upon the sea. 

The two Repuljlics between whicli the guarantee of neutrality 
and possession exists present analogous conditions with respect 
to their territorial extension. Each has along line of coast on 
both oceans to protect as well as to improve. The possessions 



314 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

of the United States upon the Pacific coast are imperial in 
extent and of extraordinary growth. Even at their present 
stage of development they would supply the larger part of tlie 
traffic which would seek the advantages of the canal. The 
States of California and Oregon, and the Territory of Washing- 
ton, larger in area than England and France, produce for export 
more than a ton of wlieat for each inhabitant, and the entire 
freights demanding water transportation eastward, already enor- 
mous, are augmenting each year with an accelerating ratio. 
While the population and products of the Pacific slope are thus 
increasing upon a vast scale, the railway system connecting 
the Gulf of Mexico with the interior and with the Great Lakes, 
is rapidly extending, thus affording additional facilities for 
enlarging the commerce that must seek the coast-line to the 
.Pacific, of which the projected canal at Panama will form a 
part, and be as truly a channel of communication between the 
Eastern and far Western States as our own transcontinental 
railways. It is the perception of this domestic function of the 
long-sought water-way between the two seas that border the 
Republic, wliich has caused the project to be regarded as of vital 
importance by this Government. The history of the enterpri-se 
is marked from the outset by the numerous expeditions which 
have, from time to time, been sent out by the United States at 
large expense to explore the various routes, and thus facilitate 
the work when the time should be ripe and the capital provided 
for the undertaking. 

If the proposed canal were a channel of communication near 
to the countries of the Old World, and employed wholly, or 
almost wholly, by their commerce, it might very properly be 
urged that the influence of the European powers should be 
commensurate with their interests. With the exercise of such 
influence, the United States could find no fault, especially if 
assured of equal participation in the peaceable enjoyment of the 
commercial facilities so afforded. The case, however, is here 
reversed, and an agreement between the European States jointly 
to guarantee the neutrality and in effect control the political 
character of a highway of commerce, remote from them and 
near to us, forming substantially a part of our commercial 
coast-line and promising to become the chief means of trans- 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY — INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 315 

portation between our Atlantic and Pacific States, would be 
viewed by this Government with the gravest concern. 

The policy of the United States is one of peace and friendly 
intercourse with every Government and people. This disposi- 
tion is not only avowed, but is abundantly shown in the fact 
that our armaments by land and sea are kept within such 
limits as to afford no ground for distrust or suspicion of menace 
to other nations. The guarantee entered into by this Govern- 
ment in 184G was manifestly in the interest of peace, and the 
necessity imposed by circumstances upon the United States of 
America to watch over a highway between its two coasts was 
so imperative that the resultant guarantee was the simplest 
justice to the chief interests concerned. Any attempt to 
supersede that guarantee by an agreement between European 
Powers, which maintain strong armies and patrol the sea with 
large fleets, and whose interest in the canal and its operation 
can never be so vital and supreme as ours, would partake of 
the nature of an alliance against the United States and would 
be regarded by this Government as an indication of unfriendly 
feeling. It would be "but an inadequate response to the good 
will we bear them and to our cheerful and constant recognition 
of their own rights of domestic policy, as well as those resulting 
from proximity or springing from neighborly interest. 

The European Powers have repeatedly united in guarantees- 
of neutrality touching the political condition of such States 
as Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland and parts of the Orient, 
where the localities were adjacent or where the interests in- 
volved concerned them nearly and deeply. Recognizing these 
facts, the Government of the United States has never offered to 
take part in such agreements or to make any agreements sup- 
plementary to them. 

While thus observing the strictest neutrality with respect to 
complications abroad, it is the long-settled conviction of this 
Government that any extension to our shores of the political 
system by which the great Powers have controlled and deter- 
mined events in Europe would be attended with danger to the 
peace and welfare of this Nation. 

While the Government of the United States has no inten- 
tion of initiating any discussion upon this subject, it is proper 



316 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

that you should ])o prepared, in case of concerted action or 
conference or exchange of opinions thereon between the great 
Powers of Europe, to communicate to the Government to which 
you are accredited the views of the President as frankly and 
as fully as they are herein set forth. At suitable times in 
your persona] and friendly intercourse with your colleagues of 
the diplomatic body at London, you may find it proper to give 
discreet expression to the policy and motives of your Govern- 
ment in the premises. 

You will be careful, in any conversations you may have, not 
to represent the position of the United States as the develop- 
ment of a new policy or the beginning of any aggressive meas- 
ures. It is nothing more than the pronounced adherence of the 
United States to principles long since enunciated by the highest 
authority of the Government, and now, in the judgment of the 
President, firmly inwoven as an integral and important part of 
our national policy. 

In his address upon taking the oath of office the President 
distinctly proclaimed the position which the Government of the 
United States would hold upon this question, and if the Euro- 
pean cabinets have failed to observe or give due heed to the 
declarations then made, it may be well for you on some proper 
occasion to call the attention of the minister of foreign affairs 
to the language used by the President. 



[Second dispatch on the subject of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty from Mr. 
Blaine, Secretary of State, to Mr. James Russell Lowell, Minister at Loudon.] 



Department of State, 

Washington, Nov. 19, 1881. 

Sir, — In pursuance of the premises laid down in my circular 
note of June 24 of this year, touching the determination of 
this Government with respect to the guarantee of neutrality 
for the interoceanic canal at Panama, it becomes my duty to 
call your attention to the convention of April 19, 1850, between 
Great Britain and the United States, commonly known as the 
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. 

According to the articles of that convention, the high con- 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY — INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 31 T 

tracting parties, in referring to an interoceanic canal through 

Nicaragua, agreed : — 

"That neither the one nor the other will ever obtain or maintain for 
itself any exclusive control over said ship canal, and that neither will ever 
erect or inaiutain any fortifications commanding the same or in the vicinity 
thereof." 

In a concluding paragraph the high contracting parties- 
agreed : — 

" To extend their protection by treaty stipulations to any other practi- 
cable communications, whether by canal or railway across the Isthmus, . . . 
which are now proposed to be established by way of Tehuantepec or 
Panama." 

This convention was made more than thirty years ago, under 
exceptional conditions which have long since ceased to exist — 
conditions which at best were temporary in their nature and 
which can never be reproduced. The remarkable development 
of the United States on the Pacific coast since that time has 
created new duties for this Government, and devolved new 
responsibilities upon it, the full and complete discharge of 
which requires, in the judgment of the President, some essen- 
tial modifications in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The interests 
of Her Majesty's Government involved in this question, in so 
far as they may be properly judged by the observation of a 
friendly power, are so inconsiderable in comparison with those 
of the United States that the President hopes a re-adjustment 
of the terms of the treaty may be reached in a spirit of amity 
and concord. 

The respect due to Her Majesty's Government demands that 
the objections to the perpetuity of the convention of 1850, as- 
it now exists, should be stated with directness and with entire 
frankness. Among the most salient of these objections is the 
fact that the operation of the treaty practically concedes to 
Great Britain the control of whatever canal may be con- 
structed. The insular position of the home government, with 
its extended colonial possessions, requires the British Empire 
to maintain a vast naval establishment. In our continental 
solidity we do not need, and in time of peace shall never create 
a rival to it. If therefore the United States binds itself not to 
fortify on land, it concedes that Great Britain, in the possible 



318 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

case of a struggle for the control of the canal, shall at the 
outset have an advantage which would prove decisive, and 
which could not be reversed, except by an enormous expendi- 
ture of treasure and force. The presumptive intention of tlie 
treaty was to place the two poAvers on a plane of perfect 
equality witli respect to the canal ; but in practice, as I liave 
indicated, this would prove utterly delusive, and would instead 
surrender it, if not in form, yet in effect, to the control of 
Great Britain. 

The treaty binds the United States not to use military 
force in any precautionary measure, while it leaves the naval 
power of Great Britain perfectly free and unrestrained — ready 
at any moment of need to seize both ends of the canal and 
render its military occupation on land a matter entirel}'^ within 
the discretion of Her Majesty's Government. The military 
power of the United States, as shown by the recent civil war, 
is without limit, and in any conflict on the American continent 
altogether irresistible. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty commands 
this Government not to use a single regiment of troops to pro- 
tect its interests in connection with the interoceanic canal, but 
to surrender the transit to the guardianship and control of the 
British Navy. If no American soldier is to be quartered on 
the Isthmus to protect the rights of his country in the inter- 
oceanic canal, surely, by the fair logic of neutralit}^ no war- 
vessel of Great Britain should be permitted to appear in the 
waters that control either entrance to the canal. 

A more comprehensive objection to the treaty is urged by 
this Government. Its provisions embody a misconception of 
the relative positions of Great Britain and the United States 
with respect to the interests of each in questions pertaining 
to tliis continent. The Government of the United States 
has no occasion to disavow an aggressive disposition. Its 
entire policy establishes its pacific character, and among its 
chief aims is to cultivate the most friendly and intimate rela- 
tions with its neighbors, both independent and colonial.. At 
the same time, this Government, with respect to European 
States, will not consent to perpetuate any treaty that impeaches 
our rightful and long-established claim to priority on the 
American continent. 



CLAYTOX-BULWER TREATY — TNTEROCEANIC CANAL. 319 

The United States seeks only to use for the defense of its 
own interests the same forecast and prevision which Her 
Majesty's Government energetically employs in defense of the 
interests of the British Empire. To guard her Eastern pos- 
sessions, to secure the most rapid transit for troops and muni- 
tions of war, and to prevent any other nation from having 
equal facilities in the same direction, Great Britain holds and 
fortifies all the strategic points that control the route to India. 
At Gibraltar, at Malta, at Cyprus, her fortifications give her 
the mastery of the Mediterranean. She holds a controlling 
interest in the Suez Canal, and by her fortifications at Aden 
and on the Island of Perim she excludes all other powers from 
the waters of the Red Sea and practically renders it inare 
■clausum. It would, in the judgment of the President, be no 
more unreasonable for the United States to demand a share in 
these fortifications, or to demand their absolute neutralization, 
than for England to make the same demand in perpetuity from 
the United States with respect to the transit across the Ameri- 
can continent. The possessions which Great Britain thus care- 
fully guards in the East are not of more importance to her than 
is the Pacific slope, with its present development and assured 
growth, to the Government of the United States. 

The States and Territories appurtenant to the Pacific Ocean 
and dependent upon it for commercial outlet, and hence directly 
interested in the canal, comprise an area of nearly eight hun- 
dred thousand square miles — larger in extent than the Ger- 
man Empire and the four Latin countries of Europe combined. 
This vast region is but beginning its prosperous development. 
Six thousand miles of railway are already constructed within 
its limits, and it is a moderate calculation to say that Avithin 
the current decade the number of miles will, at least, be 
<loubled. In the near future the money value of its surplus for 
export will be as large as that of British India, and perhaps 
larger. Nor must it be forgotten that India is but a distant 
colony of Great Britain, while the region on the Pacific is an 
integral portion of our National Union, and is of the very form 
and body of our State. The inhabitants of India are alien from 
England in race, language and religion. The citizens of Cali- 
fornia, Oregon and Nevada, with the adjacent Territories, are 



320 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

of our own blood and kindred — bone of our bone and flesh of 
our flesh. 

Great Britain appreciates the advantage and perhaps the 
necessity of maintaining at the cost of large military and naval 
establishments the interior and nearest route to India, while 
any nation Avith hostile intent is compelled to take the longer 
route and sail many thousand additional miles through danger- 
ous seas. It is hardly conceivable that the same great Power 
which considers herself justified in these precautions for the 
safety of a remote colony on another continent should object to 
the adoption by the United States of similar but far less demon- 
strative measures for the protection of the distant shores of her 
own domain, for the drawing together of the extremes of the 
Union in still closer bonds of interest and sympathy, and for 
holding to the simple end of honorable self-defense the abso- 
lute control of the great water-way which shall unite the two 
oceans, and which the United States will always insist upon 
treating as part of her commercial coast-line. 

If a hostile movement should at any time be made against 
the Pacific coast, threatening danger to its people and destruc- 
tion to its property, the Government of the United States would 
feel that it had been unfaithful to its duty and neglectful toward 
its own citizens in permitting itself to be bound by a treaty 
which gives the same right through the canal to a war-ship bent 
on an errand of destruction, that is reserved to its own Navy 
sailing for the defense of our coast and the protection of the 
lives of our people. As England insists by the might of her 
power that her enemies in war shall strike her Indian posses- 
sions only by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, the Govern- 
ment of the United States will in like manner insist that the 
interior, the safer, and more speedy route of the canal shall 
be reserved for ourselves, while our enemies, if we shall ever be 
so unfortunate as to have any, shall be remanded to the voyage 
around Cape Horn. 

A consideration of controlling influence in this question is 
the well-settled conviction on the part of this Government that 
only by the exercise of supervision on tlie part of the United 
States can the Isthmus canals be definitely and at all times 
secured against the interference and obstruction incident to 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY — INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 321 

war. A mere agreement of neutrality on paper between the 
great Powers of Europe might prove ineffectual to preserve the 
canal in time of hostilities. The first sound of a cannon in a 
general European war would, in all probability, annul the treaty 
of neutrality, and the strategic position of the canal, command- 
ing both oceans, might be held by the first naval power that 
could seize it. If this should be done, the United States would 
suffer such grave inconvenience and loss in her domestic com- 
merce as would enforce the duty of a defensive and protective 
war on her part, for the mere purpose of gaining that control 
which, in advance, she insists is due to her position and 
demanded by her necessities. 

I am not arguing or assuming that a general war, or any war 
at all, is imminent in Europe. But it must not be forgotten 
that within the past twenty-five years all the great Powers of 
Europe have been engaged in war — most of them more than 
once. In only a single instance in the past hundred years has 
the United States exchanged a hostile shot with any European 
power. It is in the highest degree improbable that for a hun- 
dred years to come, even that experience will be repeated. 

It consequently becomes evident that the one conclusive 
mode of preserving any Isthmus canal from the possible distrac- 
tion and destruction of war is to place it under the control of 
that Government least likely to be engaged in war, and able in 
any and in every event to enforce the guardianship which she 
will assume. For protection of her own interest, therefore, the 
United States in the first instance asserts her right to control 
the Isthmus transit ; and, secondly, she offers by such control 
that absolute neutralization of the canal as respects European 
powers which can in no other way be certainly attained and 
lastingly assured. 

Another consideration forcibly suggests the necessity of modi- 
fying the convention under discussion. At the time it was 
concluded Great Britain and the United States were the only 
nations prominent in the commerce of Central and South 
America. Since that time other leading nations have greatly 
enlarged their commercial connections with that country, and 
are to-day contending for supremacy in the trade of those 
shores; witliin the past four years, indeed, the number of 



322 D[PLO:\IATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

French and (icniuui vessels landing on the two coasts of Cen- 
tral America far exceeds the number of British vessels. 

While, therefore, Great Britain and the United States may 
agree to do nothing, and according to the present convention 
each remain bound to the other in common helplessness, a third 
power, or a fourth, or a combination of many, may intervene and 
give direction to the project which the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 
assumed to be under the sole control of the two English-speak- 
ing nations. Indeed, so far as the canal scheme now projected 
at Panama finds a .national sponsor or patron, it is in the 
Republic of France ; and the non-intervention enjoined upon 
this country by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, if applied to that 
canal, would paralyze the United States in any attempt to assert 
the plain rights and privileges which this Government acquired 
through a solemn treaty with the Republic of Colombia, ante- 
rior to the Clayton-Bulwer Convention. The modification of 
the treaty of 1850, now sought, is not only to free the United 
States from unequal and inequitable obligations to Great 
Britain, but also to empower this Government to treat with all 
other nations seeking a foot-hold on the Istlnnus, on the same 
basis of impartial justice and complete independence. 

One of the motives that originally induced this Government 
to assent to the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, not distinctly expressed 
in the instrument, but inferable from every line of it, was the 
expected aid of British capital in the construction of the Nicar- 
aguan Canal. That expectation has not been realized, and the 
changed condition of this country since 1850 has diminished, if 
it has not entirely removed from consideration, any advantage 
to be derived from that source. 

Whenever, in the judgment of the United States Govern- 
ment, the time shall be auspicious and the conditions favorable 
for the construction of the Nicaraguan Canal, no aid will be 
needed outside of the resources of our own Government and 
f)eople ; and while foreign capital will always be welcomed and 
never repelled, it cannot henceforth enter as an essential factor 
in the determination of this problem. 

It is earnestly hoped by the President that the considerations 
now presented will have due weight and influence with Her 
Majesty's Government, and that the modifications of the treaty. 



CLAYTOX-BULWER TREATY — TNTEROCEANIC CANAL. 323 

desired by the United States will be conceded in the same 
friendly spirit in which they are asked. Tlie following is a 
summary of the adjustments which would meet the views of 
this Government: — 

Fint^ Every part of the treaty which forbids the United 
States to fortify the canal and hold the political control of it 
in conjunction with the country in which it is located, to be 
canceled. 

Second^ Every part of the treaty in which Great Britain and 
the United States agree to make no acquisition of territory in 
Central America to remain in full force. As an original propo- 
sition this Government would not admit that Great Britain and 
the United States should be put on the same basis, even nega- 
tively, with respect to territorial acquisitions on the American 
Continent, and would be unwilling to establish such a precedent 
without full explanation. But the treaty contains that provis- 
ion with respect to Central America, and if the United States 
should seek its annulment it might give rise to erroneous and 
mischievous apprehensions among a people with whom this 
Government desires to be on the most friendly terms. The 
United States has taken special occasion to assure the Spanish 
American Republics that we do not intend and do not desire 
to cross their borders or in any way disturb their territorial 
integrity. We shall not therefore willingly incur the risk of 
a misunderstanding by annulling the clauses in the Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty which forbid such a step with respect to Central 
America. But the acquisition of military and naval stations 
necessary for the protection of the canal and voluntarily ceded 
to the United States by the Central American States is not to 
be regarded as a violation of the provision contained in the 
foreo'oino'. 

Tldrd^ The United States will not object to the clause look- 
ing to the establishment of a free port at each end of whatever 
canal may be constructed, if England desires the clause to l)e 
retained. 

Fourth, The clause in which the two Governments asfreed to 
make treaty stipulations for a joint protectorate of whatever 
railway or canal inight be constructed at Tehuantepec or 
Panama has never been perfected. No treaty stipulations for 



324 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

the proposed end have been suggested by either party, although 
citizens of the United States long since constructed a railway at 
Panama and are now engaged in the same work at Tehuantepec. 
It is a fair presumption, in the judgment of the President, that 
this provision should be regarded as obsolete by the non-action 
and common consent of the two Governments. 

Fifths The clause defining the distance from either end of the 
canal where, in time of war, captures might be made by either 
belligerent on the high seas w^as left incomplete and the distance 
was never determined. In the judgment of the President, 
speaking in the interest of peaceful commerce, this distance 
should be made as liberal as possible, and might, with advan- 
tage, as a question relating to the high seas and common to all 
nations, be a matter of stipulation between the great Powers of 
the world. 

In assuming as a necessity the political control of whatever 
canal or canals may be constructed across the Isthmus, the 
United States will act in entire harmony with the Governments 
within wdiose territory the canals should be located. Between 
the United States and the other American Republics there can 
be no hostility, no jealousy, no rivalry, no distrust. This Gov- 
ernment entertains no design in connection with this project for 
its own advantage which is not also for the equal or greater ad- 
A^antage of the country to be directly and immediately affected. 
Nor does the United States seek any exclusive or narrow com- 
mercial advantage. It frankly agrees, and will by public proc- 
lamation declare at the proper time in conjunction with the 
republic on whose soil the canal may be located, that the same 
rights and privileges, the same tolls and obligations for the use 
of the canal shall apply with absolute impartiality to the mer- 
chant marine of every nation on the globe. Equally, in time 
of peace, the harmless use of the canal shall be freely granted 
to the war-vessels of other nations. In time of Avar, aside 
from the defensive use to be made of it by the country in 
which it is constructed and by the United States, the canal shall 
be impartially closed against the Avar-A^essels of all belligerents. 
It is the desire and the determination of the United States that 
the canal shall be used only for the development and increase 
of peaceful commerce among all the nations, and shall not be 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY — INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 325 

considered a strategic point in warfare to tempt the aggressions 
of belligerents, or be seized under the compulsions of military 
necessity by any of the great Powers that may have contests in 
which the United States has no stake, and will take no part. 

If it be asked why the United States objects to the assent of 
European Powers to the terms of neutrality for the operation 
of the canal, the answer of this Government is that the right to 
assent implies the right to dissent, and thus the whole question 
would be thrown open for contention as an international issue. 
It is the fixed purpose of the United States to consider it strictly 
and solely as an American question, to be dealt with and decided 
by the American Powers. 

In presenting the views contained herein to Lord Granville, 
you will take occasion to say that the Government of the United 
States seeks this particular time for the discussion as most op- 
portune and auspicious. At no period since the peace of 1783 
have the relations between the British and American Govern' 
ments been so cordial and friendly as now. I am sure Her 
Majest}^s Government will find in the views now suggested, 
and the propositions now submitted, additional evidence of the 
desire of this Government to remove all possible grounds of 
controversy between two nations, which have so many interests 
in common, and so many reasons for honorable and lasting 
peace. 

You will at the earliest opportunity acquaint Lord Granville 
with the purpose of the United States touching the Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty and, in your own way, you will impress him 
fully with the views of your Government. ' I refrain from 
directing that a copy of this instruction be left with his Lord- 
ship, because, in reviewing the case, I have necessarily been 
compelled, in drawing illustrations from British policy, to in- 
dulge somewhat freely in the argumeiitum ad hominem. This 
course of reasoning, in an instruction to our own minister, is 
altogether legitimate and pertinent, and yet might seem dis- 
courteous if addressed directly to the British Government. 
You may deem it expedient to make this explanation to Lord 
Granville, and if afterwards he shall desire a copy of this 
instruction, you will, of course, furnish it. 



'd26 DU'LOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

[Tliird dispatch on the sul)jecl of the Claytoii-Buhvcr Treaty from Mr. 
Ulaine, Secretary of State, to Mr. James Russell Lowell, Minister at Loudon.] 



Depaktment of State, 

"Washington, Nov. 29, 188L 

Sir, — One week after mailing my instruction to you on the 
19th instant touching the presentation to Her Majesty's Gov- 
ernment of a proposal for the modification of the convention 
between the two countries, of April 19, 1850, better known as 
the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, I received Mr. Ho^Dpin's dispatch 
of the 11th instant, communicating the response of Lord Gran- 
ville to my circular note of the 24th of June last in relation to 
tlie neutrality of any canal across the Isthmus of Panama. I 
regret that Mr. Hoppin should not have advised me by tele- 
graph of the purport of his Lordship's reply, as it would have 
enabled me to present the arguments of my dispatch of the 
19th instant in a more specific form as meeting a positive issue 
rather than as generally dealing with a subject which for thirty 
years has been regarded in but one light by the public opinion 
of the United States. It seems proper now, however, in reply 
to his Lordship's note of Nov. 10, to give a summary of the his- 
torical objections to the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and the very 
decided differences of opinion between the two governments to 
which its interpretation has given rise. 

I need hardly point out to you the well-known circumstance 
that even at the time of the conclusion of the Clayton-Bulwer 
Treaty, a very considerable opposition was shown thereto on the 
juirt of far-sighted men in public life, who correctly estimated 
the complications which the uncertain terms of that compact 
might occasion. It was ably contended in Congress that its 
provisions did not, even then, suffice to meet the real j^oints 
at issue with respect to the guarantee of the neutrality of the 
whole American Isthmus on bases comporting with the National 
interests of the United States, and the differences of inter- 
})retation soon became so marked as to warrant the extreme 
proposal of Her Majesty's Government to refer them to the 
arbitration of a friendly power. 

The justice of those doubts became still more evident six 
years later, when the pretensions put forth by Her Majesty's 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY — INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 327 

Government toward territorial protection, if not absolute con- 
trol, of portions of Nicaragua and of the outlying Bay Islands 
brought up the precise, question as to the extent to which 
the Clayton-Bulwer compact restrained the projected move- 
ment ; and thereupon the interpretations respectivel}^ put upon 
that instrument by the United States and Great Britain were 
perceived to be in open conflict. The attempt made in the 
Clarendon-Dallas Treaty, which was negotiated on the 17th 
of October, 1856, to reconcile these opposing contentions, and 
to place the absolute and independent sovereignty of Nicaragua 
over its territory on an unmistakable footing, so far as the 
United States and Great Britain were concerned, failed by 
reason of the rejection by Her Majesty's Government of an 
amendment introduced by the Senate into the Clarendon- 
Dallas project. From that time onward tlie inability of the 
two Governments to agree upon a common interpretation of 
the letter and spirit of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty may be 
accepted as an historical fact. 

In the discussions between the two Governments which at- 
tended the failure of the Clarendon-Dallas Treaty, the attitude 
of the United States with respect to the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 
was amply defined. As early as the 12th of March, 1857, I find 
that General Cass, then Secretary of State, in the course of a 
conference with Lord Napier, Her Majesty's representative — 

" passed some reflections on the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty ; he had voted for it 
in the Senate, and in doing so he believed that it abrogated all intervention 
on the part of England in the Central American territory. The British 
Government had put a different construction upon the treaty, and he regretted 
the vote he had given in its favor." (Dispatch of Lord Napier to the Earl 
of Clarendon, March 12, 1857.) 

On the 6th of May, 1857, President Buchanan, in an audience 
given to Lord Napier, and in response to his lordship's sugges- 
tion that if the attempted adjustment of the difference between 
the Governments as to the Clarendon-Dallas Treaty should fail, 
the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty remained to fall back upon, char- 
acterized that instrument in much stronger terms than General 
Cass had done. To quote Lord Napier's words : — 

" The President denounced the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty as one which has 
been fraught with misunderstanding and mischief from the beginning; it 
was concluded under the most opposite constructions by the contracting 



328 DIPLO.MATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

parties. If the Senate had imagined that it could obtain the interpretation 
placed upon it by (ireat Britain, it would not have passed. If he had been 
in the Senate at the time, that treaty never would have been sanctioned." 
(Dispatch of Lord Xapier to the Earl of Clarendon, May 6, 1857.) 

These views are more explicitly and formally repeated in a 
note addressed by Secretary Cass to Lord Napier on the 29th 
of May, 1857. He says: — 

" The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, concluded in the hope that it would put an 
end to the differences which had arisen between the United States and Great 
Britain concerning Central American affairs, had been rendered inoperative 
in some of its most essential provisions by the different constructions which 
had been reciprocally given to it by the parties. And little is hazarded in 
saying that, had the interpretation since put upon the treaty by the British 
Government, and yet maintained, been anticipated, it would not have been 
negotiated under the instructions of any executive of the United States, nor 
ratified by the branch of the Government intrusted with the power of 
ratification." 

The publicity of these statements, and the strong feeling 
which then prevailed in all quarters that the Clayton-Bulwer 
Convention was inadequate to reconcile the opposite views of 
Great Britain and the United States towards Central America, 
led to a very decided conviction that the treaty should be abro- 
gated. Lord Napier reflected this growing impression when, on 
the 22d of June, 1857, he wrote to Lord Clarendon that, — 

"It is probable that if the pending discussions regarding Central America 
be not closed during the present summer, an attempt will be made in the 
next session of Congress to set aside the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. . . . There 
can be no doubt of the views of the President and Cabinet in this matter." 

Before this tendency could find expression in any official 
act, a movement on the part of Her Majesty's Government 
placed the whole matter in a new aspect. Sir William Gore 
Ouseley was sent out Oct. 30, 1857, as a special minister, with 
the double purpose of concluding with the Central American 
States, and especially with Guatemala and Honduras, settle- 
ments of the questions relative to the Bay Islands, the iNIosquito 
Territory, and the boundaries of British Honduras, and also of 
visiting Washington on the way, and conferring with the Secre- 
tary of State of the United States, for the purpose of ascertain- 
ing the views of his Government, and establishing "a perfect 
understanding with the United States upon the points respect- 
ing which differences have hitherto existed between the two 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY— INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 829 

countries." Among these differences was now superadded to 
the territorial question of Mosquito and the Islands, the very 
question which to-day most concerns us, the question of inter- 
oceanic communication, which had for some time been the occa- 
sion of correspondence between General Cass and Lord Napier, 
and in relation to which General Cass wrote, on the 20th of 
October, 1857, as follows : — 

" 1 have thus endeavored to meet the frank suggestions of your lordship 
by restating, with correspondhig frankness, the general policy of the United 
States with respect to the Governments and the interoceanic transits of 
Central America; but since your lordship has referred to the Clayton-Bulwer 
Treaty of 1850, as contemplating a ' harmonious course of action and coun- 
sel between the contracting parties in the settlement of Central American 
interests,' you will pardon me for reminding your lordship that the differ- 
ences which this treaty was intended to adjust between the United States 
and Great Britain still remain unsettled, while the treaty itself has become 
the subject of new and embarrassing complications." 

Prior to the arrival of Sir William Ouseley in the United 
States, Lord Napier held an important interview with President 
Buchanan on the 19th of October, 1857, with the object of 
obtaining " further elucidation of the opinions of the President 
with reference to the adjustment of the Clayton-Bulwer 
Treaty." On that occasion Lord Napier declared that he be- 
lieved it to be the intention of Her Majesty's Government, in 
Sir William Ouseley's mission, "to carry the Clayton-Bulwer 
Treaty into execution according to the general tenor of the in- 
terpretation put upon it by the United States ; but to do so by 
separate negotiation with the Central American Republics, in 
lieu of a direct engagement with the Federal Government," and 
asked that, pending the negotiation intrusted to Sir William 
Ouseley, "no proposal to annul the (Clayton-Bulwer) treaty 
would be sanctioned or encouraged " by the President or the 
members of the United States Government. To this the Presi- 
dent cheerfully consented, and promised to modify the state- 
ments in his annual message to Congress, accordingly, and 
under no circumstances to countenance any attempt against 
the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty in Congress. 

Matters being in this state, with Sir William Ouseley's mis- 
sion announced, and the benevolently expectant attitude of 
the United States toward it assured, Lord Napier, on the 27th 
of October, 1857, in conference with General Cass, brought up 



ooO DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

contingently, as a discarded alternative of Ins Government, a 
former proposal to refer the disputed questions to arbitra- 
tion: — 

" General Cass remarked in reply [says Lord Napier, writinjr to the Earl 
of Clarendon] tliat he did not repudiate the principle of arbitration on all 
occasions; he had invoked it, and would do so again where it seemed justly 
applicable, hut that in this matter it was declined by the American Govern- 
ment for the following reasons : The language of the treaty was so clear 
that in his opinion there ought not to be two opinions about it. . . . That 
it was a mei-e question of the interpretation of the English language, and 
he held that a foreign Government was not so competent to decide in such 
a question as the United States and England, who possessed that language 
in common." 

The Earl of Clarendon in reply approved Lord Napier's 
course in broaching anew the suggestion of arbitration, and 
authorized him to renew formally, in writing, the offer to refer 
the disputed questions arising out of the interpretation of the 
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to the decision of any European power 
(instruction of Nov. 13, 1857), and this was accordingly done 
by Lord Napier in a note to General Cass, dated Nov. 30, 1857. 

In his annual message to Congress in December, 1857, Presi- 
dent Buchanan, after narrating the negotiation and failure of 
the Clarendon-Dallas Treaty, said, — 

" The fact is, that when two nations like Great Britain and the United 
States, mutually desirous, as they are, and I trust ever may be, of maintain- 
ing the most friendly relations with each other, have unfortunately con- 
cluded a treaty which they understand in senses directly opposite, the wisest 
course is to abrogate such a treaty by mutual consent and to commence 
anew. . . . Whilst entertaining these sentiments, I shall nevertheless not 
refuse to contribute to any reasonable adjustment of the Central American 
questions which is not pi-actically inconsistent with the American interpre- 
tation of the treaty. Overtures for this purpose have been recently made 
by the British Government in a friendly spirit w Inch I cordially reciprocate." 

Meanwhile the Earl of Clarendon had instructed Sir William 
Onsele}^ under date of Nov. 19, 1857 — 

" not to commit Iler iMajesty's Government to any course whatever in 
respect to the Bay Islands, till the intentions of the Congress of the L^nited 
States in regard to the treaty of 1850 are clearly ascertained." 

The situation, then, at the close of 1857, presented a triple 
deadlock. The United States had agreed not to move toward 
the abrogation of the treaty until it could be seen what inter- 
pretation of its j)rovisions would result from Sir William Ouse- 



CLAYTOX-BULWER TREATY— INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 331 

ley's mission. Sir William had received positive instructions 
not to move until the United States should decide whether to 
abrogate the treaty or not; and Lord Napier Avas forbidden 
to move until the United States should make formal answer to 
the proposal for arbitration. The instructions of Lord Claren- 
don to Lord Napier, Jan. 22, 1858, contained these words : — 

" We are decidedly of opinion tliat it would neither be consistent with 
our dignity nor our interest to make any proposal to the United States 
Government until we have received a formal answer to our formal offer of 
arbitration. In the event of the offer being refused, it will be a great and 
hardly justifiable proof of the spirit of conciliation by wliich we are ani- 
mated, if we then show ourselves disposed to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer 
Treaty ; but we must not be in too great haste." 

In order, apparently, to break this deadlock, Lord Napier 
wrote to General Cass, Feb. 17, 1858, that — 

" Something in the nature of an alternative was thus offered to the 
American Cabinet. Should the expedient of arbitration be adopted, a great 
portion of Sir William Ouseley's duty would be transferred to other agencies. 
Should arbitration be declined, it was hoped that the efforts of Her Majesty's 
envoy would result in a settlement agreeable to the United States, inasmuch 
as in essential points it would carry the ti'eaty of 1850 into operation in a 
manner practically conformable to the American interpretation of that 
instrument.'' 

On the 10th of IN larch, 1858, the Earl of Malmesbury, who 
had succeeded Lord Clarendon in the foreign office, instructed 
Lord Napier that until an answer was returned to the proposal 
for arbitration — 

" No further step can be taken by Her :\Iajesty's Government with that 
of the United States in regard to that matter ; [aiid further, that] when this 
point is cleared up. Her Majesty's Government, supposing that the Govern- 
ment of the United States decline arbitration, will have to determine 
whether they should originate a proposal for the abrogation of the Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty, or adopt any other course which the circumstances at the 
moment may seem to recommend." 

It appears, however, that the proposal to abrogate the treaty, 
which Lord Malmesbury reserved the right to originate, had 
already been communicated to the Government of the United 
States by Lord Napier, under instructions from Lord Clarendon. 
In a dispatch, dated March 22, 1858, Lord Napier wrote : — 

" The Earl of Clarendon authorized me to inform General Cass that Her 
]\Iajesty's Government would not decline the consideration of a proposal for 
the abrogation of the treaty by mutual concert. ... I have accordingly, on 



332 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

two occasions, informed General Cass that if the Government of the United 
States be still of the same mind, and continue to desire the abrogation of 
tlie treaty of 1850, it would be agreeable to Her Majesty's Government that 
they should insert a proposal to that effect in their reply to my note respect- 
ing arbitration." 

Lord Napier further reports in detail the conversations which 
he had with General Cass as to the most proper method of 
effecting such abrogation, if agreed to. 

In reply to this dispatch of Lord Napier, the Earl of Malmes- 
bury instructed him, April 8, 1858, that his action was approved, 
and that he should confine himself to pressing for an answer to 
his proposal for arbitration. His Lordship added these signi- 
ficant words : — 

" Iler Majesty's Government, if the initiative is still left to them by the 
unwillingness of the United States themselves to propose abrogation, desire 
to retain full liberty as to the manner and form in which any such proposal 
shall be laid on their behalf before the Cabinet at Washington. . . . The 
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty has been a source of increasing embarrassment to this 
country and Her Majesty's Government, if they should be so fortunate as to 
extricate themselves from the difficulties which have resulted from it, will 
not involve themselves, directly or indirectly, in any similar difficulties for 
the future." 

The answer of General Cass, to Lord Napier's several propo- 
sals, was briefly to the effect that pending the results expected 
from Sir William Ouseley's mission to the Central American 
States, the United States could not adopt the alternative of 
arbitration, " even if it had not been twice rejected before," 
and that if — 

^' the President does not hasten to consider now the alternative of repeal- 
ing the treaty of 1850, it is because he does not w-ish prematurely to antici- 
pate the failure of Sir William Ouseley's mission, and is disposed to give a 
new proof to Her Majesty's Government of his sincere desire to preserve the 
amicable relations which now happily subsist between the two countries." 
(General Cass to Lord Napier, April 6, 1858.) 

In this posture of affairs the Earl of Malmesbury instructed 
Sir William Ouseley to open direct negotiations \vith the Cen- 
tral American States; and on the 18th of August instructed 
Lord Napier to inform the Government of the United States of 
the intentions and object of Her Majesty's Government in the 
premises. His lordship added, — 

" IModification, arbitration, and abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 
have been flatly rejected. Great Britain and Nicaragua are now about to 
treat as independent states." 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY — INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 333 

I have emphasized the phrase " flatly rejected," in view of a 
subsequent instruction of the Earl of Malmesbury to Lord 
Napier, on the 8th of December, 1858, wherein he said, — 

" I think you would have done better if you had not too pointedly 
brought before the United States Government the notion that the British 
Government might view with favor a proposal to abrogate the Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty." 

It is not difficult in following this narrative to discern that 
General Cass, though not desiring to express it, had an addi- 
tional motive for declining to propose, at that particular time, 
the abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. He did not 
desire by such proposed abrogation to indicate his willingness 
that Sir William Gore Ouseley should make treaties with the 
separate states of Central America unrestrained by the clauses 
of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty inhibiting the extension of Brit- 
ish power in that region. General Cass, with his accustomed 
caution and wisdom, clearly perceived that for the United 
States to propose abrogation on the very eve of Sir William 
Ouseley 's mission would lead to injurious inferences and would 
imply conclusions which the United States was not prepared 
to admit. Objectionable as General Cass thought the Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty, he preferred to adhere to its terms rather than 
give the implied consent of this Government that Great Britain 
should obtain such treaties as the force of her power might 
secure in Central America. The subsequent note of Lord 
Malmesbury, not strained by an uncharitable construction, 
throws additional light on the subject and confirms the wisdom 
of General Cass in declining to propose abrogation at that time. 
General Cass moreover evidently desired to retain those very 
clauses of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to which, in my dispatch 
of the 19th, I proposed on the part of this government to 
adhere. 

I have dwelt Avith somewhat of detail on this historic episode, 
partly because it admirably illustrates the spirit with which 
both governments have regarded the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 
from the first, and partly because it had more direct bearing 
on the question of the guarantee of any Isthmian transit than 
any other discussion of the time. In perusing the voluminous 
correspondence, the part unprinted as well as that prmted 



334 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

and submitted at the time to Congress and to Parliament, T am 
more than ever struck by the elastic character of the Claytoii- 
Bulwer Treat}', and the purpose it has served as an ultimate 
recourse on the part of either (Tovernment to check appre- 
hended designs in Central America on the part of the other, 
although all the while it was frankly admitted on both sides 
that the engagements of the treaty were misunderstandingly 
entered into, imperfectly comprehended, contradictorily inter- 
preted, and mutually vexatious. 

I am strengthened in this impression by the circumstance 
that in his response to my disi)atch of the 24th of June last, 
Earl Granville takes the ground that the position of Great 
Britain and the United States toward the projected Panama 
Canal is determined by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. How far 
the engagements of that compact extend to the Isthmus of 
Panama, in the sense in which the}^ extend to the projected 
Nicaraguan transit under the [)rovisions of Article VIII., does 
not seem likely to become a subject for discussion between the 
two Governments. For it will be observed that this article 
does not stretch the guarantees and restrictions of Article I. 
over either the Tehuantepec route through Mexican territory, 
or the Panama route through Colombian territory. It is in 
terms an agreement to extend the protection of both countries, 
by treaty stipulations, to those or any other practicable water- 
ways or railways from ocean to ocean across the Isthmus, 
outside of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any 
part of Central America. So far as this inchoate agreement 
to agree hereafter is applicable to the Panama transit, I have 
amply shown, in my dispatch of the 19th instant, that the 
oljligations embraced on the part of the United States in con- 
cluding the i)rior convention with the Republic of New Granada 
(now Colombia) in 1846, require that the United States should 
be freed from unequal and inequitable obligations to Great 
Britain under the vague and as yet unperfected compact of 1850. 

My main object in writing this instruction has been to 
strengthen you in any discussion which may now ensue as to 
the benefits of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and the mutual 
interest of the two countries in conserving it as the basis of a 
settlement of all questions between them touching Central 



CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY— INTEROCEANIC CANAL. 3oo 

American and Isthmian qnestions. It will be seen that from 
the time of its conclusion in 1850 until the end of 1858, its pro- 
visions were thrice made the basis of a proposal to arbitrate as 
to their meaning, that modification and abrogation have been 
alike contingently considered, and that its vexatious and imper- 
fect character has been repeatedly recognized on both sides. 
The present proposal of this Government is to free it from those 
embarrassing features, and leave it, as its framers intended it 
should be, a full and perfect settlement, for all time, of all pos- 
sible issues between the United States and Great Britain with 
regard to Central America. 

If in your conferences with Earl Granville it should seem 
necessary, you will make free use of the precedents I have cited, 
and should you, within the discretionary limits confided at the 
end of my dispatch of June 24th, have given a copy thereof to 
his lordship, you are equally at liberty to let him have a copy 
of this also, with the same explanation, that it is for your use, 
and not written as a formal note for communication to Her 
Majesty's Government. 



336 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS IN IRELAND. 



[Dispatch from Secretary Blaine to Mr. Lowell, American Minister at London.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, May 26, 1881. 

Sir, — Since my instruction of the 31st of March last, in 
reply to yours of the 12th of that month, touching the case 
of Mr. Michael P. Boyton, I have received your dispatches of 
March 21, of March 25, and April 7, all relating to the same 
subject. The prudence you have shown in dealing with Mr. 
Boyton's claim of citizenship is commendable, and the state- 
ments as to the law in his case, made in your letters to him, 
are in full accord with the interpretation of this Department. 

In answer to a resolution of the Senate, calling for the facts 
and correspondence in the matter, I laid before the President 
a full report, which was communicated to the Senate on the 
20th instant. In that report I showed that the evidence pre- 
sented by Mr. Boyton himself, and by his friends here in his 
behalf, was not such as to prove his claim to citizenship under 
our laws. 

Had his citizenship been established, I should not have hesi- 
tated to do for him all that I could properly do for an Ameri- 
can citizen, accused of offending against British law in British 
jurisdiction. How far such protection would avail to relieve 
an American citizen from the oj^eration of a British law, is a 
point ujDon which I am not prepared to express an opinion, in 
view especially of the fact that a copy of the so-called " Coer- 
cion Act," under which the Boyton proceedings were had, has 
not yet reached the Department. As described by the public 
press, it contains provisions giving a latitude of action to the 
British authorities which this Government would be loath to see 
insisted upon in the case of an American citizen. For example, 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS IN IRELAND. 337 

upon reasonable suspicion of the commission, within a fixed 
time prior to tlie passage of the law, of an act therein defined 
as giving cause for arrest, the authorities are understood to be 
empowered to decree the detention of any person, and his 
imprisonment for a prolonged period without the obligation of 
speedy trial or the production of proof of criminality. While 
in some sense an ex post facto enactment, it is in others a con- 
ferment of arbitrary and irresponsible power, and, in either 
view, repugnant to the principles of civil liberty and personal 
rights which are the common possession of British and Ameri- 
can jurisprudence. 

That the fact of American citizenship could, of itself, oper- 
ate to exempt any one from the penalties of a law which he had 
violated, is, of course, an untenable proposition. Conversely, 
however, the proposition that a retroactive lav/, suspending at 
will the simplest operations of justice, could be applied without 
question to an American citizen, is one to which this Govern- 
ment would not give anticipatory assent. 

In the specific case of Mr. Boyton, it is inferred from your 
statement of the facts that the act complained of, the incite- 
ment of divers persons to murder divers other persons, was 
committed subsequently to the passage of the Protection Act. 
Had Mr. Boyton's American citizenship been established, we 
could not, in view of this, have pleaded the retroactive appli- 
cation of the law. Neither could we have decently protested 
against the application of some process of law where so grave 
an offense was charged against a foreigner while a guest in the 
dominions of a friendly state. The allegation that such an act 
was done by an alien and a guest, while throwing upon the 
country to which the offender owes allegiance no duty to de- 
fend him or disprove his crime, on the other hand does not 
absolve the justice of the country where the commission of the 
act is alleged, from the burden of proving the guilt of the 
criminal by due course of law within a reasonable time, or, in 
default of prompt and lawful proof, from the obligation of 
releasing him. Immunity would not be asked, but prompt and 
certain justice, under the usual and unstrained operation of 
law, would be certainly expected. 

I have set these views before you hypothetically, as suggested 



338 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

by Mr. Boyton's case, not as applicable thereto. It is not 
desired tliat you should communicate them to Her Majesty's 
Government in advance of any case warranting our interven- 
tion, but you will bear them in mind if a contingency should 
unhappily arise calling for your interposition. 

[Dispatch from Secretary Blaine to Mr. Lowell, American MinistrM- at Lonrlon.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, June 2, 1881. 

Sir, — Referring to my general instruction of the 26th ultimo, 
in relation to the case of iNIichael P. Boyton, I now inclose to 
you a copy of a letter of the 30th of the same month from the 
Honorable Samuel J. Randall, in behalf of Mr. Joseph B. 
Walsh, a citizen of the United States, who, it appears, was 
arrested on the 3d of March last, under the provisions of the 
late act of Parliament, known as the " Protection Act." Mr. 
Walsh is represented as being imprisoned in Dublin, and it is 
probable that Kilmainham Jail is the place of confinement. His 
relatives in this country, knowing only of his arrest and impris- 
onment, are unable to afford the Department any information 
as to the specific charge, if any, upon which he is held ; and it 
seems probable that the prisoner himself is in ignorance in 
regard to the particular offense for which he is thus subjected 
to summary detention and confinement. 

Mr. Walsh has been a citizen of the United States since 1875. 
His character as a law-abiding citizen is vouched for by well- 
known and resjjectable citizens of Pennsylvania. I enclose a 
copy of his certificate of naturalization. 

I have already indicated to you in my instruction of the 26th 
of May, the entire absence of any disposition on the part of this 
Government to interfere with the administration of the local or 
general municipal laws of Great Britain. The laws of that 
country, and especially those that relate to the personal liberty 
and security of the citizen, have always been so much in har- 
mony with the principles of jurisi)rudence cherished by Ameri- 
cans as a birthright, that they have never failed to command 
the respect of the Government and people of the United States. 
But whatever the necessity may be in the estimation of Her 
Majesty's Government for the existence and enforcement iu 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS IN IRELAND. 339 

Ireland of the exceptional legislative measures recently enacted 
ill respect to that country, this Govermnent cannot view with 
unconcern the application of the summary proceedings attend- 
ant upon the execution of these measures to naturalized citizens 
•of the United States of Irish origin, whose business relations 
may render necessary their presence in any part of the United 
Kingdom, or whose filial instincts and love for kindred may 
have prompted them to revisit their native country. 

If American citizens within British jurisdiction offend against 
British laws, this Government will not seek to shield them 
from the legal consequences of their acts. But it must insist 
upon the application to their cases of those common principles 
of criminal jurisprudence which in the United States secure 
to every man who offends against its laws, whether he be an 
American citizen or a foreign subject, those safeguards to per- 
sonal liberty which afford the strongest protection against 
oppression under the forms of law. 

That an accused person shall immediately upon arrest be 
informed of the specific crime or offense upon which he is held, 
and that he shall be afforded an opportunity for a speedy trial 
before an impartial court and jury, are essentials to every crim- 
inal prosecution, necessary alike to the protection of innocence 
and the ascertainment of guilt. You will lose no time in mak- 
ing the necessary inquiries into the cause of Mr. Walsh's arrest 
and detention, in which it is probable that Mr. Barrows, the 
consul at Dublin, may be able to aid you. If you shall find 
that the circumstances of the case, in the light of this and pre- 
vious instructions, are such as to call for interference on the 
part of this Government, you will make such temperate but 
earnest representations as in your judgment will conduce to his 
speedy trial, or in case there is no specific charge against him, 
to his prompt release. 



340 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDEXCE. 



OPPRESSION OF THE HEBREWS IN RUSSIA. 



[The following dispatch was written by Secretary Blaine to James Russell 
Lowell, United States Minister at London.] 

Department of State, 
Washington, D.C, Nov. 22, 1881. 

Sir, — On the 26tli of July last, you transmitted a memo- 
randum of the laws and police regulations of Russia affecting 
persons of the Hebrew faith, which you had received from Sir 
Charles Dilke, one of Her Majesty's Under Secretaries of 
State for Forei":n Affairs. Althoug^h no information was then 
given as to the motive of this courteous and acceptable com- 
munication, I naturally inferred that it was in a measure the 
result of the consultations which the United States Minister at 
St. Petersburg had been directed to hold informally with his 
British colleague at that court touching the treatment of such 
American or British Jews as should, because of business en- 
gagements or other causes calling them to Russia, unfortunately 
find themselves under the operation of the proscriptive laws of 
the empire against all Israelites, native or foreign. 

The question has for some years seriously engaged the atten- 
tion of this Government as presented in the cases of American 
citizens of Hebrew faith visiting Russia on peaceful, law- 
observing errands. Under the direction of the late President 
Garfield the representation of what we believed to be our just 
claims in the premises was vigorously renewed through the 
United States Minister at St. Petersburg by means of instruc- 
tions, of which I enclose for your information copies, with the 
relative annexes. Those instructions still properly reflect the 
opinion of tliis Government that there should be a change in 
the treatment of American Israelites in Russia. The circum- 
stance that the case of Mr. Lewisohn, a British subject expelled 



OPPRESSION OF THE HEBREWS IN RUSSIA. 341 

from the Russian capital, attracted the attention of Her JNIajes- 
ty's Government, suggests to the President that the ahnost 
identical interests of the two Governments in the premises 
justify similar action on their part. 

The dispatches of the American Envoy at St. Petersburg 
show that tlie Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs has made 
frequent assertions of a strong desire on the part of his Govern- 
ment to seek a solution which would harmonize all interests. 
While declining to admit that the existing convention may 
exempt American citizens from abject submission to the reli- 
gious laws of the land, the minister lias on several occasions 
promised that the military authorities, in the enforcement of 
those laws, would give to American citizens the widest practi- 
cable latitude in interpreting the obligations of the statutes. 
In jioint of fact, it is believed that American (and presumably 
British) sojourners in Russia enjoy, under the almost absolute 
discretionary powers of the imperial military commanders, the 
privileges and immunities which are graiited to any foreigners. 
This Government conceives, however, that it should not be 
content with leaving the persons and the material interest of 
its citizens in Russia to the discretionary control of the military 
power, however friendly its declared purpose may be. In this 
conception it may very properly assume to be joined by Her 
Majesty's Government, which has ever been watchfully jealous 
of the moral freedom of its subjects in foreign lands. 

It must be inexpressibly painful to the enlightened statesman 
of Great Britain, as well as of America, to see a discarded preju- 
dice of the Dark Ages gravely revived at this day — to witness 
an attempt to base the policy of a great and sovereign State on 
the mistaken theory that thrift is a crime of which the unthrifty 
are the innocent victims, and that discontent and disaffection 
are to be diminished by increasing the causes from wdiich they 
arise. No student of history need be reminded of the lessons 
taught by the persecutions of the Jews in Central Europe and 
on the Spanish Peninsula. Then, as in Russia to-day, the 
Hebrew fared better in business than his neighbor ; then, as 
now, his economy and patient industry bred capital, and capital 
bred envy, and envy bred persecution, and persecution bred 
disaffection and social separation. The old tradition moves in 



342 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPOXDENCE. 

its unvarying circle — the Hebrews are made a people apart 
from other people, not of their own volition, but because they 
have been repressed and ostracised by the communities in which 
they reside. In Great Britain and in the United States the 
Israelite is not segregated from his fellow-men. His equal part 
in our social framework is unchallenged, his thrift and industry 
add to the wealth of the State, and his loyalty and patriotism 
are unquestioned. 

It was perfectly clear to the mind of the late President that 
an amelioration of the treatment of American Israelites in 
Russia could result only from a very decided betterment of the 
condition of the native Hebrews, that any steps taken toward 
the relief of one would necessarily re-act in favor of the other, 
and that, under all the peculiar and abnormal aspects of the 
case, it is competent and proper to urge the subject upon the 
attention of Russia. To his successor in the Chief ^Magistracy, 
these conclusions are no less evident, and I am charged by the 
President to bring the subject to the formal attention of Her 
Britannic Majesty's Government, in the firm belief that the 
community of interests between the United States and England 
in this great question of civil rights and equal tolerance of 
creed for their respective citizens in foreign lands will lead to 
consideration of the matter with a view to common action 
thereon. It would seem, moreover, a propitious time to initiate 
a movement which might also embrace other Powers whose 
service in the work of progress is commensurate with our own, 
to the end that Russia may be influenced by their joint repre- 
sentations and that their several citizens and subjects visiting 
the Empire on law-observing missions of private interest shall 
no longer be met with subjection of conscience to military forms 
and procedure which obtain nowhere else in Europe. 

You may read this dispatch to Lord Granville, and, if he 
desires it, leave with him a copy. You will say to him that, 
while abating no part of his intention to press upon the Russian 
Government the just claim of American citizens to less harsh 
treatment in the Empire by reason of their faith, the President 
will await with pleasure an opportunity for an interchange of 
views upon the subject with the Government of Her Majesty. 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 343 



DISPATCHES CONCERNING THE WAR BETWEEN 
PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA.i 



[Mr. Blaine, Secretary of State, to Mr. Christiancy, Minister at Peru, in- 
structing him on a certain basis of fact to recognize the Government of 
Calderon.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, May 9, 1881. 

Sir, — In your last dispatch you informed this Department 
that the Chilian Government refused absolutely to recognize 
General Pierola as representing the civil authority in Peru, 
and that Senor Calderon was at the head of a provisional 
government. 

If the Calderon Government is supported by the character 
and intelligence of Peru and is really endeavoring to restore 
constitutional government with a view both to domestic order 
and negotiation with Chili for peace, you may recognize it as 
the existing Provisional government, and render what aid you 
can by advice and good ofBces to that end. 

Mr. Elmore has been received by me as the confidential agent 
of such Provisional government. 

[Letter of instructions from Secretary Blaine to Mr. Hurlbut when he left 
the United States on his mission to Peru.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, June 15, 1881. 

Sir, — The deplorable condition of Peru, the disorganization 
of its government, and the absence of precise and trustworthy 
information as to the state of affairs now existing in that un- 
happy country, render it impossible to give you instructions as 
full and definite as I should desire. 

1 Mr. Blaine's instructions to our Minister to Peru will first be given; then his 
Instructions to our Minister to Chili. 



344 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

• 

Judging from tlie most recent disj)atclies of our ministers, 
you will jjrobably find on the part of the Chilian authorities 
in possession of Peru a willingness to facilitate the establish- 
ment of the Provisional government which has been attempted 
by Senor Calderon. If so you will do all you properly can to 
encourage the Peruvians to accept any reasonable conditions 
and limitations with which this concession may be accompa- 
nied. It is vitally important to Peru that she be allowed to 
resume the functions of a native and orderly government, both 
for the purposes of internal administration and the negotiation 
of peace. To obtain this end it would be far better to accept 
conditions which may be hard and unwelcome than by demand- 
ing too much to force the continuance of the military control 
of Chili. It is hoped that 3^ou will be able, in your necessary 
association v»^ith the Chilian authorities, to impress upon them 
that the more liberal and considerate their policy, the surer it 
will be to obtain a lasting and satisfactory settlement. The 
Peruvians must be aware of the sympathy of the people and 
Government of the United States, and Avill, I feel confident, be 
prepared to give to j^our representations the consideration to 
which the friendly anxiety of this Government entitles them. 

The United States cannot refuse to recognize the riorhts 
which the Chilian Government has acquired by the successes 
of the war, and it may be that a cession of territory will be 
the necessary price to be paid for peace. It would seem to be 
injudicious for Peru to declare that under no circumstances 
could the loss of territory be accepted as the result of negotia- 
tion. The great objects of the Provisional authorities of Peru 
woidd seem to be to secure the establishment of a Constitu- 
tional government, and next, to succeed in the opening of 
negotiations for peace without the declaration of preliminary 
conditions as an ultimatum on either side. It will be difficult, 
perhaps, to obtain this from Chili ; but as the Chilian Govern- 
ment has distinctly repudiated the idea that this is a war of 
conquest, the Government of Peru may fairly claim the oppor- 
tunity to make propositions of indemnity and guarantee before 
submitting to a cession of territory. As far as the influence 
of the United States extends in Chili, it Avill be exerted to 
induce the Chilian Government to consent that the question 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 345 

of the cession of territory should be the subject of negotiation 
and not the condition precedent upon which alone negotiation 
shall begin. If you can aid the Government of Peru in secur- 
ing such a result, you will have rendered the service which 
seems most pressing. Whether it is in the power of the Peru- 
vian Government to make any arrangements at home or abroad, 
singly or with the assistance of friendly powers, which will 
furnish the necessary indemnity or supply the required guaran- 
tee, you will be better able to advise me after you have reached 
your post. 

As you are aware more than one proposition has been sub- 
mitted to the consideration of this Government looking to a 
friendly intervention by which Peru might be enabled to meet 
the conditions which would probably be imposed. Circum- 
stances do not seem at present opportune for such action ; but 
if, upon full knowledge of the condition of Peru, you can 
inform this Government that Peru can devise and carry into 
practical effect a plan by which all the reasonable conditions 
of Chili can be met without sacrificing the integrity of Peru- 
vian territory, the Government of the United States would be 
willing to tender its good oftices towards the execution of such 
a project. 

As a strictly confidential communication, I enclose you a 
copy of instructions sent this day to the United States minister 
at Santiago. You will thus be advised of the position which 
this Government assumes toward all the parties to this deplor- 
able conflict. It is the desire of the United States to act in a 
spirit of the sincerest friendship to the three republics, and to 
use its influence solely in the interest of an honorable and 
lasting peace. 

[Secretary Blaine's instructions to Minister Hurlbut concerning certain 
alleged American claims against Peru.] 

Department of Statj 

Washington, Aug. 4, 18S1. 

Sir, — As you are aware several communications have been 
recently addressed to this Department in reference to certain 
alleged claims of citizens of the United States upon the Govern- 
ment of Peru, with most earnest request for the good offices of 



346 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

the United States Government in their behalf. While I cannot 
anticipate that in the present distressed and unsettled condi- 
tion of that country our representations, however urgent, Avill 
receive prompt or satisfactory attention, I deem it best, in view 
of possible contingencies, to furnish you with general instruc- 
tions. The two claims for which special consideration and 
active intervention have been asked are those known as the 
Cochet claim and the Landreau claim. In reference to the 
Cochet claim no information has been laid before the Depart- 
ment of a sutliciently definite character to warrant a specific 
instruction, and in the absence of the requisite data here 
you will be left to take such steps as may seem expedient 
on investigating the origin and character of the claim. The 
primal point at issue is whether any American citizen or asso- 
ciation of citizens has acquired an interest in the claim in a 
manner entitling him or them to the good offices of this Govern- 
ment in making any representation to Peru. As the American 
holders of the claim or their attorneys will be on the ground, 
you will no doubt be placed in possession of all the facts, but 
you will take no step committing your Government to the use 
of its good offices without first reporting hi full to the Depart- 
ment for well-considered and definite instruction. In regard 
to the Landreau claim, I see no reason to differ from the con- 
clusion to which my predecessors seem to have arrived. John 
C. Landreau was an American citizen, apparently entitled 
under a lawful contract to reasonable compensation for impor- 
tant services to Peru. While in conformity with the estab- 
lished practice of our Government, you cannot in such case 
make an official demand for the settlement of this claim, you 
will employ your good offices to procure its prompt and just 
consideration. You will have observed that in the contract 
made by the Peruvian Government with Landreau and his 
brother it is expressly stipulated that any questions arising 
under its provisions shall be submitted to the judicial tribunal 
of Peru, and that in no case shall diplomatic intervention be 
asked. You will also notice that the Supreme Court of Peru, 
sustaining a decision of the court below, has ruled that it had 
no jurisdiction of this contract, thus leaving Landreau in a posi- 
tion in which he can neither appeal to his own Government nor 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILT, AND BOLIVIA. 347 

obtain a judgment from the tribunals to which, by the contract, 
he was authorized to apply. 

While this Governm.ent will not, as at present informed, 
undertake to construe the contract or to decide upon the extent 
of the compensation due to Landreau, you are instructed' to call 
the attention of the Peruvian Government to this injustice, and 
to say that the Government of the United States will expect 
some adequate and proper means to be provided by which 
Landreau can obtain a judicial decision upon his rights. If the 
constitution of the Peruvian courts or the interpretation of the 
law by Peruvian judges deprives Landreau of the justice which 
the contract itself guaranteed him, then, in the opinion of this 
Government, Peru is bound in duty and in honor, to do one of 
three things : — Supply an impartial tribunal, extend the juris- 
diction of the present courts, or submit the case of Landreau 
to arbitration. 

I desire also to direct your attention to the fact that in the 
anticipated treaty which is to adjust the future relations of Chili 
and Peru, the latter may possibly be compelled to submit to the 
loss of territory. If the territory to be surrendered should in- 
clude the guano deposits which were discovered by Landreau, 
and for the discovery of which Peru contracted to pay him a 
royalty upon the tonnage removed, then the Peruvian Govern- 
ment should, in the treaty, stipulate with Chili for the preserva- 
tion and payment to Landreau of the amount due under his 
contract. If transfer be made to Chili it should be understood 
that this claim of an American citizen, if fairly adjudicated in 
his favor, shall be treated as a proper lien on the property to 
which it attaches, and that Chili accepts the cession with that 
condition annexed. As it may be presumed that you will be 
fully informed of the progress of the negotiations between Chili 
and Peru for a treaty of peace, you will make such effort 
as you judiciously can to secure for Landreau a fair settlement 
of his claim. You will take special care to notify both the 
Chilian and Peruvian authorities of the character and status of 
the claim in order that no definitive treaty of peace shall be 
made in disregard of the rights which Landreau may be found 
to possess. 



348 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

[On the 141h of September, Mr. Hurlbut in acknowledging the foregoing dis- 
patcli, called the "special attention of the Secretary of State to the extracts (en- 
closed) from a letter of Mr. J. R. Shipherd to him." Mr. Ilurlbut stated that 
he liad received no telegrams and no instructions from the State Department 
touching the "points reported by Mr. Shipherd," and stated further that he had 
no faith in Mr. Shipherd or his schemes. When the dispatch was received in 
Washington, Secretary Blaine was engaged, as he was for some three weeks, 
with the French and German visitors who came to the United States to attend 
the Yorktown Centennial. On the Hth of November the Secretary sent the 
following dispatch to Mr. Hurlbut: — ] 

DepartiMkxt of State, 

Washington, Nov. 17, 1881. 

Sir, — Your dispatch in reference to the Cochet and Landreau 
claims, indicates a prudent and discreet course on your part. 
After my instruction in regard to this subject had been mailed 
I became convinced that there was no need of even the pre- 
liminary inquiry, which I suggested in regard to the Cochet 
claim. There is no just ground whatever on which this Gov- 
ernment could intervene on behalf of it. So far as there 
may be any basis for the claim, it originates in the demand 
of a native Peruvian against his Government. If American 
citizens purchased an interest in such claim they purchased 
nothing more than the original claimant possessed. They did 
not and could not purchase the good offices of this Government, 
and you are instructed not to extend them in the case of the 
Cochet claim. Your proposed course in regard to the Landreau 
claim is approved ; but that claim must not, of course, be 
pressed in any manner that would seem to embarrass Peru in 
the hour of her great distress. Your previous instruction to 
use your good offices in procuring an adjudication of the Land- 
reau claim was made in view of the possible fact — of which 
there was wide rumor — that numerous French and English 
claims Avere to be presented, in which event I was anxious that 
the resources of Peru should not be exhausted in the settlement 
of other claims to the prejudice and detriment of one belonging 
to an American citizen. You will still be guided by the spirit 
iind intent of that instruction. 

The statements which you say were made to you by Mr. 
Jacob II. Shipherd arc very extraordinary. It is in the first 
place extraordinary that he should have written to you at all, 
for I carefully advised him that ministers of the United States 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 349 

in Foreign countries were not permitted to extend their good 
offices in aid of any claim unless so instructed by the Depart- 
ment of State. I repeatedly told him that any representations 
on behalf of the claims he was urging must be made at Lima 
by his own agents. His writing you was therefore an impro- 
priety, and his attempting to instruct you as to what I had 
written you was as grotesquely absurd as the language he attrib- 
utes to me. He simply makes the mistake common to a cer- 
tain class of honest enthusiasts who imagine that the polite and 
patient listener is the author of their own extravagant fancies. 
I recognize several of the singular propositions imputed to me 
as having been made by Mr. Shipherd and not in any sense 
admitted or assented to by me. I told him in the three or four 
interviews which he sought with me that I could see no possible 
o-round on which the United States Government could lend its 

o 

0-ood offices in aid of the Cochet claim. You will therefore pay 
no attention whatever to any thing Mr. Shipherd may write you 
in regard to claims against the Government of Peru. You will, 
indeed, do well to return at once to the writers any letters you 
may receive relating to private claims, unless you first have the 
matter regularly referred to you by the Department of State. 
Such reference will never be made except in cases where in the 
judgment of the Government there is a denial of justice to an 
American citizen. Legations of the United States in foreign 
countries must not be converted into agencies for the prosecu- 
tion of private claims. The Department trusts to your sound 
discretion and prudent action in all matters of this character. 

[The Credit Industriel, a fiscal institution of France, attempted to secure the 
diplomatic endorsement of the United States as an agency to adjust the financial 
relations of Chili and Peru. To this proposition the Department of State 
refused assent. Rumors were in circulation that the agents of the Credit Indus- 
triel were at Lima seeking the patronage of the American Legation. Other 
rumors of the same kind referred to the Peruvian Company of New York. 
These rumors reaching the State Department, Mr. Blaine sent the following 
instruction to Mr. Ilurlhut: — ] 

Departjient of State, 

Washington, Nov. 19, 1881. 

Sir, — On the 27th ultimo I sent 3^ou the following tele- 
gram : " Influence of your position must not be used in aid of 
Credit Industriel or any other financial or speculating associa- 



350 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

tioii." On the 2cl instant I received your reply in these words : 
"- It has not been ; it will not be.'' My reason for telegraphing 
you was the continual circulation of rumors that the aid of your 
Legation was earnestly desired to promote the interest of the 
" Credit Industriel of France," an association which is making- 
efforts to re-organize the finances of Peru. Agents of the Credit 
Industriel had visited the Department of State and ineffectually 
endeavored to enlist the interest of this Government in their 
behalf. However trustworthy the Credit Industriel may be, I 
did not consider it proper for the Dej^artment to have anything 
whatever to do with it. It is a foreign corporation, responsible 
to French law, and must seek its patronage and protection from 
France. At the same time it is no part of your duty to inter- 
fere with its negotiations with the Peruvian Government. If 
it can be made an effective instrumentality to aid that unhapjjy 
country in its prostrate and helpless condition it would be un- 
generous and unjust to obstruct its operations. Your duty is 
negative, and you will have fully complied with your instruction 
by simply abstaining from all connection with the association. 

I have another word of caution to give you. I presume that 
you will be asked by the agents or officers of the Peruvian Com- 
pany of New York to lend your influence as United States min- 
ister to promote its interests. It would, of course, present to 
you the claim of an American organization composed of repu- 
table citizens and entitled to your good offices where they may, 
with propriety, be extended. But you will specially avoid any 
advocacy of the claims of that or any other company or indi- 
vidual in the pursuit of personal ends or business enterprises. 
To a minister of your experience I need not point out the 
distinction between diplomatic good offices and personal advo- 
cacy. To extend all proper protection to American citizens, 
and to secure for tliem in any interests they may have, a 
respectful hearing before the tribunals of the country to which 
you are accredited, and generally to aid them with information 
and advice, are among the imperative and grateful duties of a 
minister — duties which increase his usefulness and add to his 
respect, and duties which I have no doubt you will faithfully 
perform. To go beyond and assume the tone of advocacy, with 
its inevitable inference of personal interest and its possible sus- 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 351 

picion of improper interest, will at once impair, if it does not 
utterly destroy, the acceptability and efiiciency of a diplomatic 
representative. I recite these elementary grounds at the 
present time, because, if I am correctly advised, all manner 
of schemes are on foot at Lima for the re-organization of the 
disordered finances of Peru, and the interested parties are seek- 
ing, iirst of all, the countenance and endorsement of the Ameri- 
can legation. You will exercise the utmost care in any step 
you may take, and if any occasion shall arise where the inter- 
position of this Government may aid in restoring the credit of 
Peru you will confer by telegraph with the Department, and 
you will take no important step without full and explicit in- 
struction. 

[As the contest between Peru and Chili grew more desperate in the autumn 
of 1S81, Minister Hurlbvit, not having time to wait for instructions where an 
interchange of notes required six weelis and sometimes eight, acted upon his 
own responsibility and took several steps which the Department of State was 
compelled to dissent from and to disapprove. On the 22d of November, 1881, 
Secretary Blaine sent the following dispatch to Minister Hurlbut : — ] 

Department of State, 

Washington, Nov. 22, 1881. 

Sir, — Your dispatches to No. 23, inclusive, have been re- 
ceived, and I learn with regret that a construction has been 
put upon your language and conduct indicating a policy of 
active intervention on the part of this Government, beyond 
the scope of your instructions. As those instructions were 
clear and explicit, and as this Department is in the possession 
of no information which would seem to require the withdrawal 
of the confidence reposed in you, I must consider this interpre- 
tation of your words and acts as the result of some strange 
and perhaps prejudiced misconception. 

My only material for forming an opinion consists of your 
memorandum to Admiral Lynch, your letter to Senor Garcia, 
the secretary of General Pidrola, and the convention with 
President Calderon, ceding a naval station to the United 
States. I would have preferred that you should hold no com- 
munication with Admiral Lynch on questions of a diplomatic 
•character. He was present as a military commander of Chilian 
forces, and you were accredited to Peru. Nor do I conceive 



352 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

that Admiral Lynch, as the commander of the Chilian army 
of occupation, had any right to ask or receive formal assur- 
ance from you as to the opinions of your Government. The 
United States was represented in Chili by a properly accredited 
minister, and from his own Government the Admiral could and 
ouglit to iiave received any information which it was important 
for him to have. It was to be expected, and even desired, that 
frank and friendly relations should exist between you, but 1 
cannot consider such confidential communication as justifying 
a formal appeal to your colleague in Chili, for the correction 
or criticism of your conduct. If there was any thing in your 
proceedings in Peru to which the Government of Chili could 
properly take exception, a direct representation to this Gov- 
ernment, through the Chilian minister here, was due, both to 
tlie Government and to yourself. 

Having said this, I must add that the language of the memo- 
randum was not unnaturally capable of misconstruction. While 
you said nothing that may not fairly be considered as war- 
ranted by your instructions, 3-ou omitted to say with equal 
emphasis some things which your instructions supplied, and 
which would perhaps have relieved the sensitive apprehensions 
of the Chilian authorities. For, while the United States would 
unquestionably '' regard with disfavor " the imperious annexa- 
tion of Peruvian territory as the right of conquest, you were 
distinctly informed that this Government could not refuse to 
recognize that such annexation might become a necessary con- 
dition in a final treaty of peace. The main purpose of your 
effort was expected to be, not so much a protest against any 
possible annexation, as an attempt by friendly but unofficial 
communications with the Chilian authorities (with whom you 
were daily associated), to induce them to support the policy 
of giving to Peru, without the imposition of harsh and abso- 
lute conditions precedent, the opportunity to show that the 
rights and interests of Chili could be satisfied without such 
annexation. There is enough in your memorandum, if care- 
fully considered, to indicate this purpose, and I only regret 
that you did not state it with a distinctness, and if necessary 
with a repetition, wliicli -would have made imiDOSsible any but 
the most willful misconception. 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 353 

As at present advised I must express disapproval of 3-our 
letter to Senor Garcia, the secretary of General Pierola. I 
think that your proper course in reference to Garcia's commu- 
nication would have been either entirely to ignore it as claim- 
ing an official character which you could not recognize, or, if 
you thought that courtesy required a reply, to state that you 
were accredited to the Calderon Government, and could, there- 
fore, know no other, and that any communication which Gen- 
eral Pierola thought it his duty or interest to make, must be 
made directly to the Government at Washington. You had 
no responsibility in the matter, and it was injudicious to assume 
any. The recognition of the Calderon Government had been 
duly considered and decided by your own Government, and 
you were neither instructed nor expected to furnish General 
Pi(^rola or the Peruvian public with the reasons for that action. 
The following language in j^our letter to Seiior Garcia might 
well be misunderstood : — 

" Chili desires, and asks for Tarapaca, and will recognize the Government 
which agrees to its cession. The Calderon Government will not cede it. It 
remains to be seen vvhethei* that of Pierola will prove more pliable." 

It might easily be supposed, by an excited public opinion on 
either side, tliat such language was intended to imply that the 
Cxovernment of the United States had recognized the Govern- 
ment of Calderon because of its resolution not to cede Peruvian 
territory. Xo such motive has ever been declared by this 
Government. The Government of Calderon was recognized 
because we believed it to be the interest of both Chili and Pern 
that some respectable authority should be established which 
could restore internal order, and initiate responsible negotia- 
tions for peace. We desired that the Peruvian Government 
should have a fair opportunity to obtain the best terms it could, 
and hoped that it would be able to satisfy the just demands of 
Cliili without the painful sacrifice of the national territory. 
But we did not make, and never intended to make, any special 
result of the peace negotiations tlie basis of our recognition of 
tlie Calderon Government. What was best, and what was pos- 
sible for Peru to do, we were anxious to the extent of our 
power to aid her in doing, by the use of whatever influence or 



354 DIPLOMATIC CORRESrONDENCE. 

consideration we enjo3'etl with Chili. Further than that, the 
Government of the United States has, as yet, expressed neither 
opinion nor intention. 

I must also express the dissatisfaction of the Department 
Avitli your telegram to the minister of the United States near 
the Argentine Confederation, suggesting that a minister be sent 
by that Government to Peru. 

This Avould have been clearly without the sphere of your 
proper official action at any time, but as there existed a serious 
difference at that time between Chili and the Argentine Con- 
federation, you might naturally have anticipated that such a 
recommendation would be considered by Chili as an effort to 
effect a political combination against her. The United States 
Avas not in search of alliances to support a hostile demonstration 
against Chili, and such an anxiety might well be deemed incon- 
sistent with the professions of an impartial mediation. 

As to the convention with regard to a naval station in the 
bay of Chimbote, I am of the opinion that althougii it is a 
desirable arrangement the time is not opportune. I should be 
very unwilling to ask such a concession under circumstances 
which would almost seem to impose upon Peru the necessity of 
compliance with our request, and I have no doubt that Avhen- 
ever Peru is relieved from present embarrassments she will 
cheerfully grant any facilities which our naval or commercial 
interests might re(i[uire. Nor in the present excited condition 
of public opinion in Chili should I be willing to afford to evil- 
disposed persons the opportunity to intimate that the United 
States contemplated the establishment of a naval rendezvous in 
the neighborhood of either Peru or Chili. The very natural 
and innocent convenience which we require might be misunder- 
stood or misrepresented, and as our sole purpose is to be allowed, 
in a spirit of the most impartial friendship, to act as mediator 
between these two powers, I would prefer at present to ask no 
favors of the one and to excite no possible apprehension in the 
other. 

Having thus stated with frankness the impression made upon 
the Department by such information as you have furnished, it 
becomes my duty to add that this Government is unable to 
understand the abolition of the Calderon Government and the 



THE AVAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 355 

arrest of President Calderon himself by tlie Cliilian autliorities, 
or I suppose I ought to say by the Chilian Government, as the 
secretary for foreign affairs of that Government has in a formal 
communication to Mr. Kilpatrick declared tliat the Calderon 
Government '"is at an end." As we recognized that Govern- 
ment in supposed conformity with the wishes of Chili, and as 
no reason for its destruction has been given to us, you will still 
consider yourself accredited to i-t, if any legitimate representa- 
tive exists in the place of President Calderon. If none such 
exists you will remain in Lima until you receive further in- 
structions, confining your communications with the Chilian 
authorities to such limits as 3'()ur personal convenience and the 
maintenance of the rights and privileges of your Legation may 
require. 

[Without instructions from the Department of State, Mr. Ilurlbut entirely 
on his own judgment and responsibility negotiated with the Government of 
Peru for a Xaval and Coaling .Station for the United States. He also enter- 
tained a proposition for the transfer of a Railroad Company of which he was to 
become the Truste(^ for an American Company. On learning these facts, Mr. 
Blaine sent the following dispatch to Mr. Ilurlbut.] 

Depaf.tjiext of State, 

Washington, Dec. 3, 1881. 

Sir, — Since sending my instruction of the 22d ultimo to 
you, I have more carefully examined the protocol transmitted 
in your dispatch of the 5th of October, signed by yourself on 
behalf of the United States, and Senor Galvez, minister of for- 
eign aflairs, on belialf of Peru, for the cession of a naval and 
coalinof station to the United States at Chimbote. I find it difii- 
cult to discover what substantial advantages would be gained 
by tliis Government in the event of its aceeptance of the pro- 
posed agreement. 

I have already had occasion to remark that the time was not 
opportune for any negotiation for a concession from a Govern- 
ment reduced to such extremity as that in which Peru stands 
to-day, and to call your attention to other grave considerations 
wdiich should outweigh any apparent temptation to our sense of 
immediate self-interest in asking or accepting the concession 
of special privileges in that country. 

The advantages offered by this protocol grow more shadowy 



356 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

as its provisions are more closely examined. The first article con- 
cedes to the United States the right to establish a coaling-station 
at Chimbote, and the second immediately adds that this shall 
not be exclusive ; that Peru reserves the right to concede the 
same facilities to any other friendly power which may solicit 
them. The third subjects to Peruvian law whatever land might 
be acquired by the United States for the purposes of a coaling- 
station ; and by the fourth article Peru has the right to with- 
draw all that is conceded by the agreement whenever she sees 
fit, upon one year's notice. 

A naval and coaling station on the South Pacific coast, care- 
fully chosen with the aid of the professional knowledge of those 
specially qualified to determine its capacity to answer the wants 
of our National ships, and over which we might exercise proper 
and necessary jurisdiction, with a secure tenure, would be of 
undoubted value, and this Government, at a fitting time, may 
be willing to negotiate upon fair terms for such a privilege. In 
the protocol presented I observe that you have, with i:)erfect 
justice, offered no consideration to Peru for this amiable con- 
cession, which would only enable us to enjoy on her shores the 
same privileges which we substantially possess to-day, and 
which she is ready to extend to every other power with which 
she is not in actual war. It has the merit at least of innocent 
diplomacy. Nothing was given and nothing was taken. 

While your negotiation of this protocol may be regarded as 
an error of judgment, involving no serious or lasting conse- 
quences, I regret that another proceeding which you report in 
the same dispatch is of a graver nature, and I cannot pass it by 
without the most decided expression of disapprobation. 

You have commenced an extraordinary negotiation with 
President Calderon in regard to a Railroad company of which 
you, while American minister, propose to become the trustee or 
intermediary, the road to be ultimately turned over to an 
American company, — an unfinished road, which you say has 
already cost nine millions of dollars. 

The principal terms of the arrangement will be the payment 
to the Peruvian Government of one million dollars in money 
and the same in paid-up stock to clear off all existing incum- 
brances, for which sums tliev concede the right to construct 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 357 

and. operate the road for twenty-five years after it is finished. 
You consider the grant very valuable and the possibilities of 
the company very large. The special advantage Avhich the 
United States may derive from these possibilities is that tlie 
price to be charged for coal carried over the road may be 
limited, as the railroad runs to Chimbote and the railroad 
arrangement is a sequel to and part of the plan for a coaling- 
station there. 

I have learned of this negotiation with profound astonishment 
and regret. 

It is hardly conceivable that under any circumstances what- 
ever your Government would consent that its minister should 
accept such a position, but for the minister himself, without 
instruction and without permission, to assume the charge of an 
extensive financial scheme for the purchase, completion, and 
transfer of a railroad is an utter disregard of every rule of pru- 
dence and propriety that should govern the conduct of a repre- 
sentative of the country. At a time like the present, when the 
ruin of Peruvian interests and the embarrassment of that Gov- 
ernment in its almost hopeless attempts to contrive a method of 
raising money have given birth to so many speculative schemes, 
and filled the press with accounts of contending companies and 
their enticing proposals, the direct participation of the Ameri- 
can minister in a plan for the re-organization of a wrecked rail- 
way company cannot fail to' lead to misapprehensions on the 
part of other Governments and distrust of the United States 
and its minister, whose motives and proceedings would be 
viewed in the most unfavorable light. 

Whether the grant be valuable or the possibilities of the 
railroad large, or the profit of the speculation great, are ques- 
tions of little moment compared to those higher considera- 
tions of national interest and dignity which should govern every 
act and every word in the intercourse and dealings of this 
Nation wdth others, as conducted by a representative clothed 
with its power and charged with its interests and its honor. 
The construction of a railroad and the cheapening of coal may 
be laudable enterprises in themselves, but this Government does 
not send its envoys abroad to undertake them. It is inconsist- 
ent with the first duty of a diplomatic agent to assume such 



358 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPOXDEXCE. 

functions; and however disinterested or innocent might be the 
design, it would inevitably awaken surmises prejudicial to his 
standing and would impair, if not utterly destroy, his influence 
with his colleagues and with the people of the country to which 
he was accredited. 

With some relief I note that this negotiation was not wholly 
completed at tlie time of writing your dispatch. I presume it 
was broken off by the arrest of President Calderon ; but I 
should be better pleased to learn that upon mature reflection the 
impropriety of engaging in such a project and of undertaking 
functions so incom[)atible with your representative character 
had occurred to your own mind, and that you had abandoned 
it altogether. 

If, on the contrary, 3'ou have actually endeavored to carry it 
out b}' any compact or convention with the Peruvian Govern- 
ment you will at once notify that Government that the }n'oject 
is disapproved, and will not be ratified ; and 3'ou will abstain 
from taking any further steps in the name of the United States 
tending to the acquisition or control of the railroad or to the 
interference in an}- way whatever in that enterprise so long as 
you are the accredited representative of this Government. 

[The following are the orighial instructions delivered by Secretary Blaine to 
General Kilpatrick when the latter was about to sail on his mission to Chili.] 

Department of State, 

"Washingtox, June 15, 1881. 

Sir, — The unfortunate condition of the relations between 
Chili and Peru makes the mission upon the duties of which 
you are now entering one of grave responsibility and great 
delicacy. Difficult as would be any intervention of the United 
States under ordinary circumstances, our position is further 
embarrassed by the failure of the conference at Arica, under- 
taken at the suggestion of my predecessor. It is evident from 
the protocols of that conference that Chili was prepared to dic- 
tate and not to discuss terms of peace, and that the arbitration 
of the United States upon any questions of difference with the 
allied powers of Peru and Bolivia was not acceptable and would 
not be accepted by the Chilian Government. Since that time 
the war has closed in the complete success of Chili, and in 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILT, AND BOLIVIA. 359 

what can scarcely be considered less than tlie conquest of Peru 
and Bolivia. 

This Government cannot therefore anticipate that the offer 
of friendly intervention in the settlement of the serious ques- 
tions now pending would be agreeable to the Government of 
Cliili. It would scarcely comport with self-res})ect that such 
an offer should be refused, and it would be of no benefit to 
Peru and Bolivia that it should be offered and declined. But 
I am sure the Chilian Government will appreciate the natural 
and deep interest which the United States feels in the termina- 
tion of a condition so calamitous in its consequences to the 
best interests of all the South American republics. It should 
also know that if at an}' time the interposition of the good 
offices of this Government can contribute to the restoration 
of friendly relations between the belligerent powers, they will, 
upon proper intimation, be promptly offered. 

While, therefore, no instructions are given you to tender 
officially any advice to the Government of Chili which is un- 
sought, you will, on such opportunity as may occur, gcn'ern 
your conduct and representations b}^ the considerations to 
which I now call your attention. 

Without entering upon any discussion as to the causes of the 
late war between Chili on the one side and Peru and Bolivia 
on the other, this Government recognizes the right which the 
successful conduct of that war has conferred upon Chili ; and, 
in doing so, I will not undertake to estimate the extent to 
which the Chilian Government has the right to carry its calcu- 
lation of the indemnities to which it is entitled, nor the 
security for the future which its interests may seem to require. 
But if the Chilian Government, as its representatives have 
declared, seeks only a guarantee of future peace, it would 
seem natural that Peru and Bolivia should be allowed to offer 
such indemnity and guarantee before the annexation of terri- 
tory, which is the right of con([uest, is insisted upon. If these 
powers fail to offer what is a reasonably sufficient indemnity 
and guarantee, then it becomes a fair subject of consideration 
whether such territory may not be exacted as the necessary 
price of peace. 

But at the conclusion of a war avowedly not of conquest. 



360 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

but for the solution of differences which diplomacy had failed 
to settle, to make the acquisition of territory a sine qua non of 
peace is calculated to cast suspicions on the professions with 
which war was originally declared. It may very well be that 
at the termination of such a contest the changed conditicm and 
relation of all the parties to it may make re-adjustment of 
boundaries or territorial changes wise as well as necessary. But 
this, Avhere the war is not one of con(|uest, should be the result 
of negotiation and not the absolute preliminary condition on 
which alone the victor consents to negotiate. At this day, 
when the right of the people to govern themselves, the funda- 
mental basis of republican institutions, is so widely recognized, 
nothing is more difficult or more dangerous than the forced 
transfer of territory, carrjdng with it an indignant and hostile 
population ; and nothing but a necessity joroven before the 
world can justify it. It is not a case in which the Power 
desiring the territory can be accepted as a safe or impartial 
judge. 

While the United States Government does not pretend to 
express an opinion whether or nut such an annexation of terri- 
tory is a necessary consequence of this war, it believes that it 
would be more honorable to the Chilian Government, more con- 
ducive to the security of a permanent peace, and more in con- 
sonance Avith those principles wliich are professed by all the 
republics of America, that such territorial changes should be 
avoided as far as possible ; that they should never be the result 
of mere force, but, if necessary, should be decided and tempered 
by full and equal discussion between all the Powers whose 
people and whose national interests are involved. 

At the present moment, the completeness of the victory of 
Chili seems to render such a diplomatic discussion impossible. 
The result of the conflict has been not only the defeat of the 
allied armies, but the dissolution of all responsible government 
in Peru. Its soil is occupied, the collection of its revenues 
is transferred to the conquerors, its executive, legislative, and 
judicial functions are in abeyance. It can neither enforce order 
within nor assure peace without. 

An effort, and apparently a ver}'- earnest and honest one, has 
been made to create a Provisional government, which shall 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 361 

gradually restore order and the reign of law. But it is obvious 
that for such a government to succeed in obtainhig the con- 
fidence either of its own people or foreign Powers, it must be 
allowed a freedom and force of action which cannot be exercised 
while Chili holds absolute possession and governs by military 
authority. This Government, therefore, has been glad to learn 
from its minister in Chili, whom you succeed, that the Chilian 
authorities have decided to give their support to the efforts of 
Senor Calderon to establish on a steady footing a Provisional 
government in Peru. 

You will, as far as you can do so with propriety and without 
officious intrusion, approve and encourage this disposition on 
the part of the Chilian Government, and this Department will 
be exceedingly gratified if your influence as the representative 
of the United States shall be instrumental in inducing the Gov- 
ernment of Chili to giv.e its aid and support to the restoration 
of regular, constitutional government in Peru, and to postpone 
the final settlement of all questions of territorial annexation to 
the diplomatic negotiations which can then be resumed with the 
certainty of a just, friendly, and satisfactory conclusion. 

In any representation which you may make, you will say that 
the hope of the United States is that the negotiations for peace 
will be conducted, and the final settlement between the two 
countries determined, without invoking on either side, the aid 
or intervention of any European Power. 

The Government of the United States seeks only to perform 
the part of a friend to all the South-American republics engaged 
in this unhappy conflict, and it will regret to be compelled to 
consider how far that feeling might be affected, and a more 
active interposition forced u[)on it, by any attempted complica- 
tion of this question with European politics. 

If at any time you shall judge it expedient and advantageous 
to read this dispatch to the minister of foreign affairs, you are 
authorized to do so. The decision on this point is left to your 
discretion. 



362 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

[Mr. Kilpatrick had pursawl a rourse at Santiago, wliich in the judgmont of 
the State Department liad created erroneous and hurtful impressions with the 
Government of C'iiili touching the intentions of the United States. Mr. lilaine 
addressed him the following dispatch to that effect: — ] 

Department of State, 

Washington, Nov. 22, 1881. 

Sir, — Your dispatch of Oct. 14, witli a copy of your reply 
to Sefior Balinaseda, lias been received. The cornniuuication 
to which it was a reply should have accompanied it, in order 
that the Department could properly judge of your answer. 
Your letter is not approved by the Department. You had 
made known to the Government of Chili the scope of your 
instructions, and had given abundant assurance of the friendly 
feeling of your own Government. 

If the conduct of Mr. Hurlbut in Peru had given sufficient 
ground of complaint to the Chilian Government, that complaint 
should have been made in Washington. jNlr. Hurlbut's j^res- 
entation speech to President Calderon, his memorandum to 
Admiral Lynch, his letter to Garcia, and telegraphic reports 
from Buenos Ayres, were not subjects upon which you were 
called to pass judgment, nor upon which you should have been 
interrogated by the Chilian Government. Nothing in your 
conduct or language had excited its apprehensions, and no 
explanation was due or could have been expected from you, of 
the language or conduct of your colleague in Peru. I should 
have been glad if it had occurred to you to call the attention of 
the secretary for foreign affiiirs to the impropriety of such a 
communication, and, in referring to the fact, that your instruc- 
tions, gave all the assurance which he could either desire or 
ask, of the friendly disposition of the United States, I should 
have much preferred that you had furnished him with a copy 
of those instructions instead of submitting a paraphrase which 
does not fully represent their spirit and meaning. 

Indeed, I find it difficult to understand how the Chilian Gov- 
ernment could have been under any misapprehension as to the 
disposition or purpose of the United States, when the instruc- 
tions l)oth to yourself and to Mr. Ilurlbut had been already 
frankly communicated. It is still more difficult to understand 
the abolition of the Calderon Government and the arrest of 



THE WAR BETWEEN PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA. 363 

the President himself, in the face of the assurance addressed 
to you by Seuor Valderrania : viz., — 

"You are therefore authorized to say to your Government that every 
effort would be given by Chili to strengthen the Government of President 
Calderon, giving to it the most perfect freedom of action, considering the 
Chilian occupation. That no question of territorial annexation would be 
touched until a constitutional government could be established in Peru, 
acknowledged and respected by the people, with full powers to enter into 
diplomatic negotiations for peace." 

The President has learned with great regret of the arrest 
and removal of President Calderon, but in the present state of 
his information wil? not undertake to appreciate its significance. 
He hopes that when the facts are better known, he will be 
relieved from the painful impression that it was intended as a 
rebuke to the friendly disposition of the United States. The 
present condition of affairs, the difficulty of prompt communi- 
cation with the legations of Peru and Chili, and the unfortu- 
nate notoriety of the differences between yourself and your 
colleague in Peru, have, in the judgment of the President, ren- 
dered a special mission necessary. You will inform the Chilian 
Government that a special envoy will be immediately sent, and 
you will assure that Government that he will come in the spirit 
of impartial friendship, anxious to learn that recent occurrences 
liave not been intended to disturb the long-continued and 
friendly relations existing between us ; and instructed by the 
President to lay before the Chilian Government frankly, but 
with a scrupulous consideration for the rights and interests of 
that Government, the views which he holds upon the deplor- 
able condition of affairs in South America, a condition now fast 
assuming proportions which make its settlement a matter of 
deep concern to all the republics of the continent. The Presi- 
dent anticipates that this step, suggested by friendly interest 
and justified by our existing relations, will be properly appre- 
ciated by the Chilian Government ; and lie sincerely hopes 
that no action of that Government will tend further to compli- 
cate existing difficulties before the arrival of the minister.^ 

1 Similar notice of the Special Mission was sent to Mr. Hurlbut at Lima. 



3G4 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



SPECIAL MISSION TO CHILI, PERU, AND 
BOLIVIA. 



[The confusion resulting in Peru and Chili as described in dispatches to Mr. 
Hurlbut and Mr. Kilpatrick (pages ;343-36;3) induced the President to dispatch 
a special envoy accredited to the three countries, not to supersede the ministers 
already there in the ordinary business of theii- Legations, but to assume control 
of the negotiations pending between the United States and the belligerent coun- 
tries on the subject of their hostilities. Honorable William H. Trescott, for- 
merly Assistant Secretary of State under General Cass, and special envoy to 
China with Hon. James F. Swift in 1879-80, was selected for the mission. He 
was accompanied by Mr. Walker Blaine, who was holding the post of Third 
Assistant Secretary of State at the time. The following are the instructions 
which Mr. Blaine, Secretary of State, gave to Mr. Trescott : — ] 

Department of State, 

Washington, Dec. 1, 1881. 

Sir, — While the circumstances under which the President 
has deemed it proper to charge j^ou with a special mission to 
the Republics of Chili, Peru, and Bolivia, render it necessary 
that much shall be confided to your own discretion, it is 
desirable that you should be placed in full possession of his 
views as to the general line of conduct which you will be 
expected to pursue. 

For this purpose it is not necessary at present to go farther 
back in the history of the unfortunate relations between Chili 
on the one hand and Peru and Bolivia on the other, than the 
time when the defeat of General Pierola, his abandonment of 
the capital and the coast, and their occupation by the Chilian 
army, seemed to have put an end to all responsible native gov- 
ernment in Peru. Lima having been surrendered on the 19th 
January, 1881, Pierola driven across the mountains, the Chilian 
military occupation consolidated ; and the Chilian Government 
refusing to recognize Pierola as representing the Government of 
Peru, it became absolutely necessary that some Government 



SPECIAL MISSION TO CHILI, PERU, AND BOLIVIA. 3G5 

should be established, if Peru were uot to remain simply a 
military district of Chili. 

On February 25, 1881, i\Ir. Cliristiancy, the United States 
minister at Lima, wrote this Department as follows : — 

" A movement has, therefore, been initiated amon^ some of the leadin,^ 
citizens of Lima and Callao, and euconraged f>i/ t/ie Chilinn authoriliex, to es- 
tablish anew Government in opposition 'to that of Pierola [wlio is still at 
Tacna or Yareja]." 

From this date to April 13, 1881, Mr. Christiancy kept the 
Department informed of the probabilities of the establishment 
of the Calderon Government, so called from the name of the 
eminent Peruvian statesman who had been chosen President. 
On that date he wrote : — 

" In my own private opinion, however, if the provisional government had 
come up without any appearance of support from the Chilian authorities, it 
would have had many elements of popularity and would probably have suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the acquiescence of the people. This new Government 
realizes the importance of an early peace witii Chili, the necessity of which 
must be recognized by every thoughtful man; while that of Pierola professes 
to intend to carry on the war; but it has no means for the purpose at pres- 
ent, and my own opinion is that any effort to do so will end in still greater 
calamities to Peru." 

On ]\Iay 23, the same minister, in a postscript to his dispatch 
of the 17th, says : — 

" Since writing the above it has become still more probable that the threat 
of 'indefinite occupation' was intended only to drive the Peruvians into the 
support of the provisional government, as two days ago they allowed the 
Government to send seventy-five soldiers to Tacna, Oroyo, etc., to control 
that part of the country, so as to allow the members of Congress to come to 
Lima; and it now begins to look as if Calderon might secure a quorum (two- 
thirds) of the Congress. If he does succeed, it will be some evidence that 
Peru ac(puesces in that Government. And if he gets tlie two-thirds of the 
members, I think I shall recognize the provisional government, or that of 
the Congress and the President they may elect, unless in the mean time I 
shall receive other instructions." 

On the 9th of May, 1881, instructions had been sent to him 
from this Department, which crossed this dispatch, in which he 
was told : — 

" If the Calderon Government is supported by the character and intelli- 
gence of Peru, and is really endeavoring to restore constitutional govern- 
ment with a view both to order within and negotiation with Chili for peace, 
you may recognize it as the existing provisional government, and render 
what aid you can by advice and good offices to that end." 



8G6 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPOXDENCE. 

Acting under these instructions, although \vith some ex- 
pressed doubt as to tlie probable permanence of its existence, 
Mr. Christiancy, on tlie 2Gtli of June, 1881, formally recognized 
the Calderon Government. It is clear that this recognition was 
not an unfriendly intervention as far as the wishes and interests 
of Chili were concerned, for under date of May 7, 1881, two 
days before these instructions of the 9th were sent to Mr. 
Christiancy, INIr. Osborn, the United States minister to Chili, 
wrote from Santiago as follows : — 

" In my dispatch of April 5. regarding the war in this section, I men- 
tioned the fact that the minister of war, Mr. Vergara, wlio iiad been with 
the army at Lima, had been sent for, and was then on his way to Chili. 
Since his arrival the Government lias labored to reach a conclusion touching 
the course to be pursued M'ith Peru, and to that end numerous and extended 
discussions among the tninisters and prominent citizens of the republic, who 
had been invited to participate, have taken place. Three plans or proposi- 
tions were discussed : First, that spoken of by me in my No. 201, involving 
the withdrawal of the army to Arica; second, the occupation of the entire 
Peruvian coast by the Chilian forces, and its government by Chilian author- 
ities ; and third, the strengthening of the (Jovernment of Calderon, and the 
negotiation of a peace tlierewith. The propriety of entering into negotia- 
tions with Pierola was not even dignified witii a consideration. After much 
labor tlie Government reached the conclusion that the last proposition 
afforded the easiest wav out of their complications, and it has been deter- 
mined to send Mr. Godoy to Peru, in charge of the negotiations. . . . The 
ministry has freely counseled with me regarding the difticulties of the situa- 
tion, and in view of their previous determination to have nothing to do with 
Pierola, I cannot but applaud the result of their deliberations. To vacate 
the country now would be to turn it over to anarchy, and to attempt to 
occupy the entire coast would, in time, involve both countries in ruin. The 
most feasible way to peace is, in my opinion, the one resolved upon. In 
fact it is the only one which offers any reasonable hope of a solution of the 
difficulties during the present generation." 

In giving the su^iport of recognition to the Calderon Govern- 
ment, therefore, so far was this Government from doing what 
could be considered an unfriendly act to Chili, that it was, in 
fact, giving its aid to the very policy which Chili avowed, and 
which, in the opinion of competent judges, was the only method 
of reasonable solution. 

This conclusion of the Government was confirmed by the 
information which was transmitted to the Department by Gen- 
eral Kilpatrick, who succeeded Mr. Osborn as the United 
States Minister to Chili. General Kilpatrick was appointed 
after the recognition of the Calderon Government, and was 
furnished with instructions to which I have already referred. 



SPECIAL MISSION TO CHILI, PERU, AND BOLIVIA. 367 

In his dispatch, under date August 15, 1881, he says: — 

"I have the honor to report that, so far as the assurance of public men 
can be relied upnn, your instructions have been complied with ; your ideas 
of final peace accepted, not only by the present administration at Santiago, 
but still better of Senor Santa JNLaria, the President elect, whose administra- 
tion will have begun when you receive this note." 

General Kilpatrick then proceeds to give a detailed account 
of a lono- interview with the leading and most influential 
members of the Chilian Government, in which he quotes the 
following as the final assurances given to him by the Chilian 
Secretary of State : — 

"You may therefore say to your Government that every effort would be 
given by Chili to strengthen the (iovernment of President Calderon, giving 
to it the most perfect freedom of action, considering the Chilian occupation; 
that no question of Chilian amiexation would be touched until a constitu- 
tional government could be established in Pern, acknowledged and respected 
by the 'people, with full powers to enter into diplomatic negotiation for peace ; 
that no territory would be exacted unless Chili failed to secure ample and 
just indemnification in other and satisfactory ways, as also ample security 
for the future ; and that in no case would Chili exact territory save where 
Chilian enterprise and Chilian capital had developed the desert and where 
to-day nine-tenths of the people were Cliilian." 

But after this recognition, made in entire good faith to both 
parties, three things followed: — 

1. The presence of a United States minister at Lima ac- 
credited to the Calderon Government, and the reception in 
Washington of a minister from that Government, gave it, 
unquestionably, increased strength and confidence. 

2. The adherents of Pierola, realizing the necessity of peace 
and the existence of a stable Government to negotiate it, gradu- 
ally abandoned the forlorn hope of continued resistance, and 
grave their adhesion to the Calderon Government. 

3. The Congress which assembled within the neutral zone set 
apart for that purpose by the Chilian authorities, and which was 
further allowed by the Chilian Government to provide for the 
military impositions by the use of the national credit, and was 
thus recognized as the representative of the Peruvian people, 
authorized President Calderon to negotiate a peace, but upon 
the condition that no territory should be ceded. 

As soon as these facts indicated the possibility of a real and 
mdependent vitality in tlie Constitution of the Calderon Gov- 



368 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

ernment the Chilian military authorities issued an order for- 
bidding any exercise of its functions within the territory 
occupied by the Chilian army — that is, within the entire terri- 
tory west of the mountains, including the capital and ports of 
Peru. 

Unable to understand this sudden and, giving due regard to 
the professions of Chili, this unaccountable cliange of policy, 
this Government instructed its minister at Lima to continue 
to recognize the Calderon Government until more complete in- 
formation would enable it to send further instructions. If our 
present information is correct, immediately upon the receipt of 
this communication they arrested President Calderon, and thus, 
as far as was in their power, extinguished his Government. 
The President does not now insist upon the inference which 
this action would warrant. He hopes that there is some ex- 
planation which will relieve him from the painful impression 
that it was taken in resentful reply to the continued recognition 
of the Calderon Government by the United States. If, unfor- 
tunately, he should be mistaken, and this motive be avowed, 
your duty will be a brief one. You will say to the Chilian 
Government that the President considers such a proceeding as 
an intentional and unwarranted offense, and that you will com- 
municate such an avowal to the Government of the United 
States, with the assurance that it will be regarded by the Gov- 
ernment as an act of such unfriendly import as to require the 
immediate suspension of all diplomatic intercourse. You will 
inform me immediately of such a contingency and instructions 
will be sent you. 

But I do not anticipate such an occurrence. From the infor- 
mation before the Department, of which you are possessed, it is 
more probable that this course will be explained by an allega- 
tion that the conduct and language of the United States minis- 
ter in Peru had encouraged the Calderon Government to such 
resistance of the wishes of Chili as to render the negotiation of 
a satisfactory treaty of peace with the Calderon Government 
impossible. Any explanation which relieves this action by the 
Chilian Government of the character of an intentional offense 
will be received by you to that extent, provided it does not 
require as a condition precedent the disavowal of Mr. Hurlbut. 



SPECIAL MISSION TO CIIILT, PERU, AND BOLIVIA. 369 

Whatever may be my opinion as to the discretion of all that 
may have been said or done by iNIr. Hurlbut, it is impossible for 
me to recognize the right of the Chilian Government to take 
such action without submitting to the consideration of this 
Government any cause of complaint against the proceedings 
of the representative of the United States. The Chilian Gov- 
ernment was in possession of the instructions sent to our min- 
ister at the capital of Peru, as well as those to his colleague 
at Santiago. There was no pretense that the conduct of Gen- 
eral Kilpatrick was any thing but friendly. Chili was repre- 
sented here by a minister who enjoyed the confidence of his 
Government, and nothing can justify the assumption that the 
United States was acting a double part in its relations to the 
two countries. If the conduct of the United States minis- 
ter seemed inconsistent with what Chili had every reason to 
know was the friendly intention of the United States, a cour- 
teous rei^resentation through the Chilian minister here would 
have enabled this Government promptly to correct or confirm 
him. You are not therefore authorized to make to the Chilian 
Government any explanation of the conduct of General Hurlbut, 
if that Government, not having afforded us the opportunity 
of accepting or disavowing his conduct, insists upon making its 
interpretation of his proceedings the justification of its recent 
action. 

It is hoped, however, that 3'ou will be able, by communica- 
tion at once firm and temperate, to avoid these embarrassments. 
If you should fortunately reach the point where frank, mutual 
explanation can be made without the sacrifice of that respect 
which every Government owes to itself, jou will then be at 
liberty, conforming your explanation to the recent instruction 
to jNIr. Hurlbut, with a copy of which you are furnished, to 
show to the Government of Chili how much both his words and 
acts have been misconceived. 

It is difficult for me to say how far an explanation would 
be satisfactory to the President which was not accompanied by 
the restoration or recognition of the Calderon Government. 
The objects which he has at heart are, first, to prevent the 
misery, confusion, and bloodshed which the present relations 
between Chili and Pern seem only too certain to renew ; and, 



370 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPOXDEXCE. 

second, to take care that in any friendly attempt to reach this 
desirable end the Government of the United States is treated 
with the respectful consideration to which its disinterested pur- 
pose, its legitimate influence, and its established position entitle 
it. The President feels in this matter neither irritation nor 
resentment. He regrets that Chili seems to have misconceived 
both the spirit and intention of the Government of the United 
States, and he thinks her course has been inconsiderate. He 
will gladly learn that a calmer and wiser judgment directs 
her counsels, and asks in no exacting spirit the correction of 
what were perhaps natural misunderstandings. lie would be 
satisfied with the manifestation of a sincere purpose on the part 
of Chili to aid Peru, either in restoring the present provisional 
government or establishing in its place one which will be allowed 
the freedom of action necessary to insure internal order and to 
conduct a real negotiation to some substantial result. 

Should the Chilian Government, while disclaiming any inten- 
tion of offense, maintain its right to settle its difficulties with 
Peru without the friendly intervention of other Powers, and 
refuse to allow the formation of any Government in Peru which 
does not pledge its consent to the cession of Peruvian territory, 
it will be your duty, in language as strong as is consistent with 
the respect due to an independent Power, to express the disap- 
pointment and dissatisfaction felt by the United States at such 
a deplorable policy. 

You will say that this Government recognizes without reserve 
the right of Chili to adequate indemnity for the cost of the war, 
and a sufticient guarantee that it will not again be subjected to 
hostile demonstration from Peru ; and further, that if Peru is 
unable or unwilling to furnish such indemnity, the right of con- 
quest has put it in the power of Chili to supply it, and the 
reasonable exercise of that right, however much its necessity 
may be regretted, is not ground of legitimate complaint on the 
part of other Powers. But this Government feels that the ex- 
ercise of the right of absolute conquest is dangerous to the best 
interests of all the Republics of this continent ; that from it are 
certain to spring other wars and political disturbances; and that 
it imposes, even upon the conqueror, burdens which are scarcely 
compensated by the apparent increase of strength which it 



SPECIAL MISSION TO CHILI, PERU, AXD BOLIVIA. 371 

gives. This Government also holds that between two inde- 
jjendent nations, the mere existence of war does not confer the 
right of conquest until the failure to furnish the indemnity and 
guarantee which can be rightfully demanded. 

The United States maintains, therefore, that Peru has the 
right to demand that an opportunity should be allowed her to 
find such indemnity and guarantee. Nor can this Government 
admit that a cession of territory can be properly exacted far ex- 
ceeding in value the amplest estimate of a reasonable indemnity. 

Already, by force of its occupation, the Chilian Government 
has collected large sums from Peru ; and it has been openly 
and officially asserted in the Chilian Congress that these mili- 
tary impositions have furnished a surplus bej'ond the cost of 
maintaining its armies in that occupation. The annexation of 
Tarapaca, wliich, under proper administration, would produce 
annually a sum sufficient to pay a large indemnit}^ seems not 
to be consistent with the execution of justice. 

The practical prohibition of the formation of a stable govern- 
ment in Peru, and the absolute appropriation of its most valu- 
able territory, is simply the extinction of a State which has 
formed part of the system of Republics on this continent, 
honorable in the traditions and illustrations of its past history, 
and rich in resources for future progress. The United States, 
with which Peru has for many years maintained the most cor- 
dial relations, has the right to feel and to express a deep interest 
in her distressed condition ; and while, cherishing equal friend- 
liness to Chili, we will not interpose to deprive her of the fair 
advantages of military success, nor put any obstacle to the 
attainment of future security, we cannot regard with unconcern 
the destruction of Peruvian nationality. If our good offices are 
rejected, and this policy of the absorption of an independent 
State be persisted in, this Government will consider itself dis- 
charged from any further obligation to be influenced in its 
action by the position which Chili has assumed, and Avill hold 
itself free to appeal to the other Republics of this continent to 
join it in an effort to avert consequences which cannot be con- 
fined to Chili and Peru, but which threaten with extreme 
danger the political institutions, the peaceful progress, and the 
liberal civilization of all America. 



372 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

If, however, none of these embarrassing obstacles supervene, 
and Chili receives in a friendly spirit the representations of the 
United States, it will be your purpose — 

Firsts To concert such measures as will enable Peru to estab- 
lish a regular Government, and initiate negotiation. 

Second, To induce Chili to consent to such negotiation with- 
out cession of territory as a condition precedent. 

Third, To impress upon Chili that in such negotiation she 
ought to allow Peru a fair opportunity to provide for a reason- 
able indemnity ; and, in this connection, to let it be understood 
that the United States would consider the imposition of an 
extravagant indemnity, so as to make the cession of territory 
necessary in satisfaction, as more than is justified by the actual 
cost of the war, and as a solution threatening renewed difficulty 
between the two countries. 

As it is probable that some time will elapse before the com- 
pletion of all the arrangements necessary for a final negotiation, 
this Government would suggest a temporary convention, which, 
recognizing the spirit of our jDresent friendly representation, 
would bring Peru and Chili into amicable conference and pro- 
vide for a meeting of plenipotentiaries to negotiate a permanent 
treaty of peace. 

If negotiation be assured, the ability of Peru to furnish the 
indemnity will be a matter of direct interest. Upon this sub- 
ject we have no information upon which definite instructions 
can now be based. While you will carefully abstain from any 
interposition in this connection, you will examine and report to 
this Department promptly any plans which may be suggested. 

You will not indicate any wish that the Government of the 
United States should act as umpire in the adjudications between 
the contending powers. Should an invitation to that effect be 
extended, you will communicate by telegraph for instructions. 
The single and simple desire of this Government is to see a just 
and honorable peace at the earliest day practicable, and if any 
other American Government can more effectively aid in pro- 
ducing this auspicious result, the United States will cordially 
sustain it and lend such co-operation as the circumstances may 
demand. 



OUR FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH MEXICO. 373 



OUR FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH MEXICO. 



[Dispatch from Secretary Blaine to Mr. Morgan, Minister to Mexico.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, June 1, 1881. 

Sir, — As the relations between the Government of the 
United States and that of Mexico happily grow more amicable 
and intimate, it is but natural that a disposition should in like 
manner be developed between the citizens of the respective 
countries to seek new means of fostering their material inter- 
ests, and that the ties which spring from commercial inter- 
change should tend to grow and strengthen with the growing 
and strengthening spirit of good will which animates both peo- 
ples. That this spirit exists is the most grateful proof that the 
frank and conciliatory policy of the United States towards 
Mexico has borne and is bearing good fruit. This is especially 
visible in the rapidly extending desire on the part of the 
citizens of this country to take an active share in the prosecu- 
tion of those industrial enterprises for which the resources of 
Mexico offer so broad and promising a field, as well as in the 
responsive and increasing disposition which is manifest on the 
part of the iMexican people to welcome such projects. No fact 
in the historical relations of the two great Republics of the 
Northern Continent gives happier promise for both, and it is a 
source of especial gratification to this Government that the 
jealousies and distrusts which have at times clouded the perfect 
friendship of the two Governments are thus yielding to the 
more wholesome spirit of reciprocal frankness and confidence. 

It seems proper at this time, when a new administration has 
constitutionally and peacefully come into power in INIexico, 
devoted to fulfilling and extending the just policy of its prede- 
cessor, to call your attention to those general precepts which, 



374 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPOXDEXCE. 

in the judgment of the President, should govern the relations 
between the two Republics, and to bear testimony to which 
will be your most important duty as the diplomatic representa- 
tive of the United States. 

The record of the last fifteen years must have removed from 
the minds of the enlightened statesmen of Mexico every lin- 
gering doubt touching the policy of the United States toward 
her sister republic. That policy is one of faithful and impartial 
recognition of the independence and the integrity of the .Alexi- 
can nation. At this late day it needs no disclaimer on our part 
of tlie existence of even the faintest desire in the United States 
for territorial extension south of the Rio Grande. The bound- 
aries of the two republics have been long settled in conformity 
with the best jurisdictional interests of both. The line of de- 
marcation is not conventional merely. It is more than that. It 
separates a Spanish-American people from a Saxon-American 
jjeople. It divides one great nation from another with distinct 
and natural finality. The increasing prosperity of both Com- 
monwealths can only draw into closer union the friendly feel- 
ing, the political sympath}-, and the varied interests which their 
history and neighborhood have created and encouraged. In all 
your intercourse with the iNIexican Government and people it 
must be your cliief endeavor to reflect this firm conviction of 
your Government. 

It is a source of profound gratification to the Government of 
the United States that the political condition of Mexico is so 
apparently and assuredly in the path of stability, and the ad- 
ministration of its Constitutional Government so regular, that 
it can offer to foreign capital that just and certain protection 
without which the prospect even of extravagant profit will fail 
to tempt the extension of commercial and industrial enterprise. 
It is still more gratifying that with a full comprehension of the 
political and social advantages of such a mode of develojiing 
the material resources of the country, the Government of iMexico 
cordially lends its influence to the spirit of welcome and en- 
couragement witli which the Mexican people seem disposed to 
greet the importation of wealth and enterprise. 

The present progress in this direction by the National 
Government of Mexico is but an earnest of the screat erood 



OUR FRIENDLY RELATIONS AVITII MEXICO. 375 

which may be caccomplished when the iuthnate and necessary 
relations of the two countries and peoples are better understood 
than now. To conduce to this better understanding must be 
your constant labor. While, therefore, carefully avoiding all 
appearance of advocacy of any personal undertakings which 
citizens of the United States may desire to initiate in Mexico, 
you will take every opportunity which you may deem judicious 
to make clear the spirit and motive that control this movement 
in the direction of developing Mexican resources. You will 
impress upon the Government of Mexico the earnest wish and 
hope felt by the people and Government of this country that 
these resources may be multiplied and rendered fruitful for the 
primary benefit of the Mexican people themselves; that the 
forms of constitutional and stable Government may be strength- 
ened as domestic wealth increases and as the conservative spirit 
of widely distributed and permanent vested interests is more 
and more felt; that the administration of the Mexican finances, 
fostered by these healthful tendencies, may be placed upon a 
firm basis ; that the rich sections of the great territory of the 
republic may be brought into closer intercommunication ; in a 
word, that Mexico may promptly and firmly assume the place 
toward which she is so manifestly tending as one of the most 
prosperous and well-ordered States in the harmonious system of 
Western republics. 

In future dispatches more detailed instructions will be given 
you touching certain points of interest to the two Governments 
in the direction of an enlarged reciprocal trade and interchange 
of commodities. It is my present design simply to acquaint 
you witli the President's views and feeling toward Mexico and 
with the spirit which will animate his policy. 

You can read this dispatch to tlie minister of foreign affairs, 
and, if he desires, leave a copy of it witli him. 

[Views of the United States Government touching the disturhecl relations 
between Mexico and Guatemala. Dispatch from Secretary Blaine to Mr. 
Morgan, United States Minister to Mexico.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, June 16, 1881. 

Sin, — In my instruction of the 1st instant, I endeavored to 
set forth the spirit of good will which animates this Govern- 



376 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

ment toward IMexico. I trust no doubt can remain as to the 
sincerity of our friendship. Believing that this friendship, and 
the frankness which has always distinguished the policy of 
this country toward its neighbors, warrant the tender of ami- 
cable counsel when occasion therefor shall appear, and deeming 
such counsel due to our recognized impartiality, and to the 
position of the United States as the founder and, in some sense, 
the guarantor and guardian of Republican principles on the 
American continent, it seems proper now to call your attention 
to a subject touching which we feel some natural concern. I 
refer to the question of boundaries and territorial jurisdiction 
pending between Mexico and Guatemala. 

In the time of the Empire, the forces of Iturbide overran a 
large part of the territory of what now constitutes Central 
America, which had then recently thrown off the Spanish domi- 
nation. The changing fortunes of war resulted in the with- 
drawal of Mexican forces from most of that region, except the 
important provinces of Soconusco and Chiapas, which remained 
under their control. Since that time the boundaries between 
the two countries have never been adjusted upon a satisfactory 
basis. Mexico, becoming a liepublic, did not forego claims 
based on the imperial policy of conquest and absorption, while 
Guatemala, resisting further progress of Mexican arms, and dis- 
puting, step by step, the conquests already made, has never 
been able to come to a decision with her more powerful neigh- 
bor concerning the relative extension of their jurisdiction in 
the disputed strip of territory lying between the Gulf of 
Tehuantepec and the Peninsula of Yucatan. 

Under these circumstances, the Government of Guatemala 
has made a formal application to the President of the United 
States to lend his good offices toward the restoration of a better 
state of feeling between the two Republics. This application is 
made in frank and conciliatory terms, as to the natural pro- 
tector of the rights and national integrity of the Republican 
forms of Government existing near our shores and to which 
we are bound by many ties of history and of material interest. 
This Government can do no less than give friendly and con- 
siderate heed to the representations of Guatemala, even as it 
would be glad to do were the appeal made by ^Mexico, in the 



OUR FRIEXDLY RELATIONS AVITII MEXIC6. 377 

interest of justice and a better understanding. Events, fresh 
ill the memory of the living generation of jSIexicans, when the 
moral and material support of the United States, although then 
engaged in a desperate domestic struggle, was freely lent to 
avert the danger which a foreign empire threatened to the 
national life of the Mexican Republic, afford a gratifying proof 
of tlie unselfishness with which the United States regards all 
that concerns the welfare and existence of its sister republics 
of the continent. 

It is alleged, on behalf of Guatemala, that diplomatic efforts 
to come to a better understanding with INIexico have proved 
unavailing ; that under a partial and prelindnary accord look- 
ing to the ascertainment of the limits in dispute, Guatemalan 
surveying parties,sent out to study the land, with a view to 
proposing a basis of definitive settlement, have been impris- 
oned by the Mexican authorities ; that Guatemalan agents for 
the taking of a census of the inhabitants of the territory in 
question have been dealt with in like summary manner ; and, 
in fine, that the Government of ^Mexico has slowly but steadily 
encroached upon the bordering country heretofore held by 
Guatemala, substituting the local authorities of Mexico for those 
already in possession, and so widening the area in contention. 

It is not the province of the United States to express an 
opinion as to the extent of either the Guatemalan or the 
Mexican claim to this region. This Government is not a self- 
constituted arbiter of the destinies of either country, or of 
both, in this matter. It is simply the impartial friend of both, 
ready to tender frank and earnest counsel touching any thing 
which may menace the peace and prosperity of its neighbors. 
It is, above all, anxious to do any and every thing which will 
tend to make stronger the natural union of the republics of 
the continent, in the face of the tendencies of other and distant 
forms of government to influence the internal affairs of Spanish 
America. It is especially anxious, in the pursuance of this 
policy, to see the Central American Republics more securely 
united than they have been in protection of their common 
interests, which interests are, in their outward relations, identi- 
cal in principle with those of Mexico and the United States. 
It feels that every thing which may lessen the good will and 



378 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

harmony earnestly to be desired between the Spanish-American 
Republics of the Isthmus must in the end disastrously affect 
their mutual well-being. The responsibility for the maintenance 
of this common attitude of united strength is, in the President's 
conception, shared by all, and rests no less upon the strong 
States than upon the weak. 

Without, therefore, in any way prejudicing the contention 
between Mexico and Guatemala, but acting as the unbiased 
counselor of both, the President deems it his duty to set before 
the Goverinnent of Mexico his conviction of the danger to the 
principles that Mexico has signally and successfully defended 
in tlie past, which would ensue should disrespect be shown 
for the boundaries that separate her from her weaker neigh- 
bors, or should the authority of force be resorted to in the es- 
tablishment of rights over territory which they claim, without 
the conceded justification of her title thereto. Especially would 
the President regard it as an unfriendly act toward his cherished 
plan of upbuilding strong Republican governments in Spanish 
America, if Mexico, whose power and generosity should be alike 
signal in such a case, should seek or permit any misunderstand- 
ing with Guatemala, when the path toward a pacific avoidance 
of trouble is an international duty at once easy and imperative. 

You are directed to request an interview with Senor jNIariscal, 
in which to acquaint him with tlie purport of this instruction. 
In doing so, your judgment and discretion may have full scope to 
avoid any misunderstanding on his part of the spirit of friendly 
counsel which prompts the President's course. Should Senor 
Mariscal evince a disposition to become more intimately ac- 
quainted with the President's views after your verbal exposition 
thereof, you are at liberty to read this dispatch to him, and, 
should he so desire, to give him a copy. 

[Views of the Government of the United States touching disturbed relations 
of Mexico and Guatemala. Second dispatch from Secretary Blaine to Mr. 
Morgan, Minister to Mexico.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, June 21, 1881. 

Sir, — I had hardly completed my instruction to you of the 
16tli instant, when information reached me from the United 
States minister at the Guatemalan capital, placing in a still 



OUR FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH MEXICO. 379 

graver light tlie condition of the relations between Mexico and 
Guatemala, touching the possession of the territory of Soco- 
nusco. In fact, so serious is the apprehension caused in the 
mind of the President by these untoward reports, that I feel 
constrained to supplement my previous instructions to you on 
the subject with even more energy and directness. 

It would appear now that the movement on the part of 
Mexico was not merely to obtain possession of the disputed 
territory, but to precipitate hostilities with Guatemala, with the 
ultimate view of extending her borders by actual conquest. 
Large bodies of Mexican troops are said to be on their way to 
Soconusco, and the exigency is reported to be so alarming that 
plans for national defense are uppermost in the minds of Presi- 
dent Barrios and his advisers. Frequent border raids into 
Guatemalan territory have inflamed the passions of the resi- 
dents of the frontier country, and the imminence of a collision 
is very great. Of the possible consequence of war it may be 
premature to speak, but the information possessed by the De- 
partment intimates the probable extension of hostilities to the 
other Central American States and their eventual absorption 
into the ^Mexican federal system. 

I cannot believe it possible that these designs seriously enter 
into the policy of the Mexican Government. Of late years 
the American movement toward permanence of international 
boundaries has been so marked, and so essential a part of the 
continental policy of the American Republics, that any depart- 
ure therefrom becomes necessarily a menace to the interests 
of all. 

This is a matter touching which the now established policy 
of the Government of the United States to refiain from terri- 
torial acquisition gives it the right to use its friendly offices in 
discouragement of any movement on the part of neighboring 
States which may tend to disturb the balance of power between 
them. More than this, the maintenance of this honorable atti- 
tude of example involves to a large extent a moral obligation 
on our part, as the disinterested friend of all our sister States, 
to exert our influence for the preservation of the national life 
and integrity of any one of them against aggression, whether 
this may come from abroad or from another American Republic. 



380 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPOXDEXCE. 

No State in the American system has more imeqiiivocall}^ 
condemned the forcible extension of domain, at the expense of 
a weaker neighbor, than Mexico herself; and no State more 
heartily concurs in the condemnation of Filibusterism in every 
form than the United States. It is clearly to the mutual inter- 
est of the two countries, to whose example the success of Re- 
publican institutions on this continent is largely due, that their 
policy in this regard should be identical and unmistakable. 

As long as the broadened international diplomacy of our day 
affords peaceable recourse to principles of equity and justice in 
settlement of controversies like that between Mexico and 
Guatemala, the outbreak of a war between them would, in the 
judgment of the President, involve much graver results than 
the mere transitory disturbance of the entente cordiale so much 
desired by the^ United States Government between all the 
American republics. Besides the transfers of territory which 
might follow as enforced compensation for the costs of a war, 
it is easy to foresee the serious complications and consequent 
dangers to the American system, should an opening be afforded 
to foreign Powers to throw their influence or force into the scale 
in determination of the contest. ISIexico herself has but too 
recently recovered from the effects of such a foreign constraint 
not to appreciate at its full force the consideration tlnis pre- 
sented. The peaceful maintenance of the status quo of the 
American commonwealths is of the very essence of their policy 
of harmonious alliance for self-preservation, and is of even more 
importance to Mexico than to the United States. 

I have adverted in my dispatch of the 16th instant, to the 
desire of the United States that its neighbors should possess 
strong and prosperous Governments, to the assurance of their 
tranquillity from internal disturbance and outside interference. 
While we wish this happy result for Mexico, we equally wish it 
for the other Spanish-American nations. It is no less indispen- 
sable to the welfare of Central America than of Mexico, and, 
by moral influence and the interposition of good offices, it is 
the desire and the intention of the United States to hold up the 
republics of Central America in their old strength and to do all 
that may be done toward insuring the tranquillity of their 
relations among themselves and their collective security as an 



OUR FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH MEXICO. 381 

association of allied interests, possessing in their common rela- 
tionship to the outer world all the elements of national 
existence. In this enlarged policy we confidently ask the co- 
operation of Mexico. A contrary course on her part could only 
be regarded as an unwise step, while any movement directly 
leading to the absorption, in whole or part, of her weaker neigh- 
bors would be deemed an act unfriendly to the best interests of 
America. 

It is desired that you should make earnest but calm represen- 
tation of these views of the President to the Mexican minister 
of foreign affairs. In addition to embodying the main points of 
my previous instruction, you will make use of such temperate 
reasoning as will serve to show Senor Mariscal that we expect 
every effort to be made by his Government to avert a conllict 
with Guatemala, by diplomatic means, or, these failing, by resort 
to arbitration. You will intimate to Senor Mariscal discreetly, 
but distinctly, that the good feeling between Mexico and the 
United States will be fortified by a frank avowal that the Mexi- 
can policy toward the neighboring States is not one of conquest 
or aggrandizement but of conciliation, peace, and friendship. 

I have written this instruction rather to strengthen your own 
hands in the execution of the delicate and responsible duty thus 
confided to you than with a view to its formal communication 
to Seuor ]\Iariscal by leaving a copy of it with him. If, in 
your discretion, the important ends in view will be subserved 
by your making the Minister acquainted with portions hereof, 
you are at liberty to do so, while regarding the instruction 
■ as a whole in a confidential light, and as supplementary to 
my instruction of the 16th, which you have been authorized 
to communicate in extenso, if desirable. 

[Views of the Government of the United States touching the disturbed rela- 
tions between Mexico and Guatemala. Third dispatch from Secretary Blaine 
to Mr. Morgan, Minister to Mexico.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, Nov. 28, 1881. 

SiE, — Referring to your correspondence with this depart- 
ment since its instruction tendering the good offices of the 
Government of the United States in aid of the amicable set- 



382 DIPLOMATIC COIlllESPOXDENCE. 

tlement of the differences between Mexico and Guatemala, I 
have to remark that it would be a matter of the gravest dis- 
appointment if I found myself compelled to agree with you in 
the conclusion which you seem to have reached in your last 
dispatch. 

Reporting in your dispatch of Sept. 22, 1881, j^our most 
recent conversation with Senor Mariscal, the Mexican secretary 
for foreign affairs, you say, — 

" I venture to suggest that, unless the Government is prepared to an- 
nounce to the iMexican Government that it will actively, if necessary, pre- 
serve the peace, it would be the part of wisdom on our side to leave the 
matter where it is. Negotiations on the subject will not benefit Guatemala, 
and you may depend upon it what we have already done in this direction 
has not tended to the increasing of the cordial relations which I know it is 
so much your desire to cultivate with this nation." 

"To leave the matter where it is," you must perceive, is 
simply useless, for it will not remain there. The friendly 
r-dL44jmis of the United States and Mexico would certainly not 
be promoted by the refusal of the good offices of this Govern- 
ment, tf^dered in a spirit of the most cordial regard both for 
the interests and honor of Mexico, and suggested only by the 
earnest desire to prevent a war useless in its purpose, deplor- 
able in its means, and dangerous to the best interests of all the 
Central American republics in its consequences. To put aside 
such an amicable intervention as an unfriendly intrusion, or to 
treat it as I regret to see the Mexican secretary for foreign 
affairs seems disposed, as a partisan manifestation on behalf of 
claims which we have not examined and interests which we 
totally misunderstand, can certainly not contribute "to the 
increasing of the cordial relations which you know it is so 
much our desire to cultivate with Mexico." 

But, more than this, "to leave the matter where it is" is to 
leave Mexico and Guatemala confronting each other in armed 
hostility, with the certainty that irritation and anger on the 
one side and extreme apprehension on the other will develop 
some untoward incident leading to actual collision. In such 
event no successful resistance can be anticipated on the part 
of Guatemala. Whether the claims of Mexico be moderate or 
extravagant, whether the cession of territory be confined to 
the present alleged boundary lines or be extended to meet the 



OUR FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH ^MEXICO. 383 

necessities of a war indemnity, tliere would be another lament- 
able demonstration on this continent of the so-called right of 
conquest, the general disturbance of the friendly relations 
of the American republics, and the postponement for an indefi- 
nite period of that sympathy of feeling, that community of 
purpose, and that unity of interest, upon the development 
of which depends the future prosperity of these countries. 

The Republic of Guatemala, one of those American repub. 
lies in whose fortunes this Government naturally feels a friendly 
interest, communicated to this Government that there existed 
between it and Mexico certain differences which, after much 
diplomatic consultation, had failed to reach a satisfactory settle- 
ment. Recognizing the relation of the United States to all the 
republics of this continent, aware of the friendly services which 
this Government has never failed to render to Mexico, and 
presuming not unnaturally that Mexico would receive our ami- 
cable counsel with cordiality and confidence, the Goveniment 
of Guatemala asked our good offices with that Pou^n'or the 
purpose of inducing it to submit to an impartial ari*itration 
those differences upon which they had been unable to agree. 

To refuse such a request would not only have been a viola- 
tion of international courtesy to Guatemala, but an indica- 
tion of a want of confidence in the purposes and character 
of the INIexican Government which we could not and did not 
entertain. 

In tendering our good offices, the Mexican Government was 
distinctly informed that the United States — 

" is not a self-constituted arbitrator of the destinies of either country or 
of both in this matter. It is simply the impartial friend of both, ready to 
tender frank and earnest counsel touching any thing which may menace the 
peace and prosperity of its neighbors." 

Before this instruction coidd have reached you, information 
was received that large bodies of Mexican troops had been 
ordered to the frontier in dispute. You were therefore directed 
to urge upon the Mexican Government the propriety of abstain- 
ing from all such hostile demonstration in order to afford oppor- 
tunity for the friendly solution of the differences between the 
two governments. It is unnecessary now to repeat the reasons 
which you were instructed to submit to the consideration of 



384 DirLOMATIC CORRESrOXDENCE. 

the Mexican Government, which were stated in the most earnest 
and friendly spirit, and whicii were communicated by you to the 
Mexican secretary for foreign affairs with entire fidelity. 

I now learn from your dispatches that our information was 
correct ; that Mexican troops have been ordered to the disputed 
boundary line, and that, while the Mexican Government does 
not absolutely reject a possible future arbitration, it is unwilling 
to postpone its own action to further discussion, and does not 
receive the good offices of this Government in the spirit in 
which they have been tendered. The United States does not 
pretend to direct the policy of Mexico, nor has it made any 
pretension to decide in advance upon the merits of the contro- 
versy between iNIexico and Guatemala. The Mexican Govern- 
ment is of course free to decline our counsel, however friendl}'. 
But it is necessary that we should know distinctly what the 
Mexican Government has decided. It is useless, and from your 
dispatches I infer it would be irritating, to keep before the 
Government of Mexico the offer of friendly intervention, while, 
on the other hand, it would not be just to Guatemala to hold 
that Government in suspense as to whether there was a possi- 
bility of the acceptance of the amicable mediation which we 
have offered. 

You will, therefore, upon the receipt of this instruction, ask 
for an interview with the secretary for foreign affiiirs. You 
will press upon his reconsideration the views whicli you have 
already submitted to him ; assure him of the earnestness with 
which this Government desires a peaceful solution of the exist- 
ing differences, and inform him of our profound regret and 
disappointment that the tender of our good offices has not 
been received in the spirit in which it was made. You will, if 
he affords you the opportunity, endeavor to enforce the prac- 
ticability of the solution which you suggested both to himself 
and the Guatemalan minister, by which the arbitration could 
be limited to the question of boundary without involving the 
title to the province of Chiapas. 

If the. Government of Mexico should be disposed to accept 
an arbitration, limited in its points of settlement — as M. 
Herrera, the Guatemalan minister has indicated as probably 
acceptable to his Government — you will ask the assurance of 



OUR FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH MEXICO. 385 

the Mexican Government that pending the discussions neces- 
sary to perfect such an arrangement all hostile demonstration 
should be avoided, and if possible that the Mexican troops 
should be withdrawn from the immediate vicinity of the dis- 
puted boundary. But this latter request you will not insist 
upon, if it should be an obstacle to obtaining the consent of 
Mexico to a limited arbitration. 

Should the Mexican Government, however, decide that it 
is not consistent with its views to accept a friendly interven- 
tion in the differences between itself and Guatemala, you will 
inform the Secretary for foreign affairs that you accept this 
decision as undoubtedly within the clear right of Mexico. 
You will express the very deep and sincere regret which this 
Government will feel if it shall find the powerful Republic of 
Mexico unwilling to join the Government of the United States 
in maintaining and establishing the principle of friendly arbitra- 
tion for international differences on the continent of America. 
Mexico and the United States, acting in cordial harmony, can 
induce all the other independent governments of North and 
South America to aid in fixing this policy of peace for all 
future disputes between nations of the Western Hemisphere. 
It would be a marked and impressive precedent, if, in a dis- 
pute with a weaker neighbor, Mexico should frankly consent to 
a friendly arbitration of all existing differences. 

You will further say to Mr. Mariscal that you are definitely 
instructed to call his attention to an expression of opinion which 
you have reported in your dispatch of 11th of August, 1881, as 
follows : — 

" He, Senor Mariscal, appears to entertain a very bad opinion of the 
President of Guatemala, and to think that his appeal to the United States 
has a purpose beyond the settlement of the boundary between the two coun- 
tries. He said, for instance, he had been infoi-med that you had expressed 
an opinion favorable to the consolidation of the Central American republics 
into one Government ; that the President of Guatemala was favorable to 
such a project ; that he would like, in such an event, to become the Presi- 
dent of the new nation, and that he was endeavoring to obtain the influence 
of the United States to further his ambition in that direction. He seems 
impressed with the idea that General Barrios is Mexico's enemy, and that 
it would not be well to have his power increased." 

Of course the Government of the United States has no infor- 
mation as to the personal ambitions of General Barrios, and it 



386 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDEXCE. 

would deem any inquiry into or consideration of such a subject 
both unworthy and improper in any discussion of the great 
interests which concern the people of Central America, and 
their relation to the kindred republics of this continent. I am 
unwilling to believe, and, if compelled to believe, should deeply 
regret, that any such consideration could affect the temper or 
thought of the Mexican Government in determining its policy 
towards the republics of Central America. 

But in reference to the union of the Central American repub- 
lics under one Federal Government; the United States is ready 
to avow that no subject appeals more strongly to its sympathy 
nor more decidedly to its judgment. Nor is this a new policy. 
For many years this Government has urged upon the Central 
American States the importance of such an union to the crea- 
tion of a well-ordered and constitutionally governed republic, 
and our ministers have been instructed to impress this upon the 
individual governments to which they have been accredited, 
and to the Central American statesmen with whom they have 
been associated. We have always cherished the belief that 
in this effort we had the sincere sympathy and cordial co-opera- 
tion of the Mexican Government. Under the conviction that 
the future of the people of Central America is absolutely 
dependent upon the establishment of a Federal Government 
which would give strength abroad and maintain peace at home, 
our chief motive in the recent communications to Mexico was 
to prevent the diminution, either political or territorial, of any 
one of these States, or the disturbance of their exterior relations, 
in order that, trusting to the joint aid and friendship of Mexico 
and the United States, they might be encouraged to persist in 
their effort to establish a Government which would, both for 
their advantage and ours, represent their combined wealth, in- 
telligence and character. 

If this Government is expected to infer from the language of 
Seilor Mariscal that the prospect of such a result is not agree- 
able to the policy of jNlexico, and that the interest which the 
United States has always manifested in its consummation 
renders unwelcome the friendly intervention which we have 
offered, I can only say that it deepens the regret with which 
we shall learn the decision of the Mexican Government, and 



OUR FRIENDLY RELATIOXS WITH MEXICO. 387 

compels me to declare that the Government of the United 
States will consider a hostile demonstration against Guatemala 
for the avowed purpose, or with the certain result of weak- 
ening her power in such an effort, as an act not in consonance 
with the position and character of Mexico, not in harmony 
with the friendly relations existing between us, and injurious to 
the best interests of all the republics of this continent. 

The Government of the United States has sincere sympathy 
with the Spanish republics of America, and profound interest 
in their prosperity ; and is influenced by no selfish considera- 
tions in its earnest eff"orts to prevent war between them. This 
country will continue its policy of peace even if it cannot have 
the great aid which the co-operation of Mexico would assure ; 
and it will hope, at no distant day, to see such concord and 
co-operation between all the nations of America as will render 
war impossible. 



388 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE HAWAIIAN 
KINGDOM. 



[After the United States had negotiated a Treaty of Reciprocity with the 
Kingdom of Hawaii (Sandwich Islands), Great Britain sought to claim the 
same trade relations nnder a treaty which contained the "most favored nation" 
clause. Being advised of this movement by Honorable James M. Comly, 
American minister at Honolulu, Secretary Blaine sent instructions contained 
in the following dispatches : — ] 

Department of State, 

Washington, June 30, 1881. 

SiE, — Your dispatch of the 6th instant has been considered 
in connection with your former advices, to which you particularly 
refer. 

Your course, u]3on the question to which you have called 
the attention of the Department, is approved. While I desire 
earnestly to avoid the use of imperative language toward the 
Hawaiian Government, and prefer that our relation in any con- 
sequent discussion should be that of friendly advice and sup- 
port, this Government cannot permit any violation, direct or 
indirect, of the terms and conditions of the treaty of 1875. 

That treaty was made at the continuous and urgent request 
of the Hawaiian Government. It was, as it was intended to be, 
an evidence of the friendship of the United States, and was 
shaped by a large and liberal disposition on our part to consult 
the wishes and interests of the Hawaiian Government, As you 
are aware, there was much opposition to some of its concessions 
by our own citizens whose capital was employed in certain 
agricultural industries. The term of the treaty was limited in 
order that both parties might obtain practical experience of its 
operation ; and in order to secure the experiment from possible 
disturbance it was expressly stipulated — 

" on the part of His Hawaiian Majesty that so long as this treaty shall 
remain in force, he will not make any treaty by which any other nation shall 
obtain the same privileges, relative to the admission of any articles free of 
duty, hereby secured to the United States." (Article IV.) 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOM. 389 

It would be an unnecessary waste of time and argument to 
undertake an elaborate demonstration of a proposition so ob- 
vious as that the extension of the privileges of this treaty to 
other nations under a "most favored nation " clause in existing 
treaties, would be as flagrant a violation of the explicit stipula- 
tion as a specific treaty making the concession. 

You are instructed to say to the Hawaiian Government that 
the Government of the United States considers this stipulation 
as of the very essence of the treaty and cannot consent to its 
abrogation or modification, directly or indirectly. You will add 
that if any other power should deem it proper to employ undue 
influence upon the Hawaiian Government to persuade or com- 
pel action in derogation of this treaty, the Government of the 
United States will not be unobservant of its rights and interests 
and will be neither unwilling nor unprepared to support the 
Hawaiian Government in the faithful discharge of its treaty 
obligations. 

In reference to the probability of a judicial construction of 
the treaty by the Hawaiian courts, upon proceedings instituted 
by a British merchant, I would have been glad if you had been 
able to furnish me with the correspondence between the British 
commissioner and the Hawaiian secretary for foreign affairs. 
From your history of the controversy, I find it difficult to 
understand how Her Britannic Majesty's Government can con- 
sistently maintain a right of diplomatic intervention for the 
settlement of any claim for the difference in duty imposed 
under the British treaties and under the treaty with the United 
States. 

Be that as it may, a judicial decision of this question by the 
Hawaiian courts would be as unsatisfactory to the United States 
as to Great Britain. I am unaware whether or not a treaty, 
according to the Hawaiian Constitution, is, as with us, a supreme 
law of the land, upon the construction of which — the proper 
case occurring — every citizen would have a right to the 
judgment of the courts. 

But even if it be so, and if the judicial department is entirely 
independent of the executive authority of the Hawaiian Gov- 
ernment, then the decision of the court would be the authorized 
interpretation of the Hawaiian Government, and however bind- 



390 DIPLOMATIC C0RRP:SP0NDENCE. 

ing upon that Government would l)e none the less a violation 
of the treaty. 

In the event, therefore, that a judicial construction of the 
treaty should annul the privileges stipulated, and be carried 
into practical execution, this Government would have no alter- 
native and would be compelled to consider such action as the 
violation by the Hawaiian Government of the express terms 
and conditions of the treaty, and, with whatever regret, would 
be forced to consider what course in reference to its own inter- 
ests had become necessary upon the manifestation of such un- 
friendl}^ feeling. 

The diligence and ability which you have given to the con- 
sideration of this subject render perhaps any further instruction 
unnecessar}?-, but I will suggest that in your communications 
with the Hawaiian Government you should convey the impres- 
sion that the Government of the United States believes it to be 
the desire and intention of the Hawaiian Government to carry 
out the provisions of the treaty in good faith, and that we un- 
derstand and appreciate the unjust pressure of foreign interests 
and influence brought to divert it from its plain and honorable 
duty. The position of the Government of the United States in 
your representations should be rather that of encouragement of 
the Hawaiian Government to persevere in the faithful discharge 
of its treaty obligations, than complaint of any anticipated 
dereliction. 

The Department will be glad of the fullest and promptest 
communication upon this sal)ject. 

[Dispatch on same subject from Secretary Blaine to Mr. Comly, Minister at 
Honolulu.] 

Department of State, 

"Washington, Nov. 19, 1881. 

Sir, — In your dispatch you have informed this Department 
of the efforts made by the British commissioner to prejudice the 
interests and influence of the United States in the Hawaiian 
Islands ; and you properly assume that such efforts, so far as 
they tend to improve the diplomatic position of his country by 
his personal conduct, must be counteracted by corresponding- 
endeavors on your part without the formal intervention of this 
Government. 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOM. 391 

The action of the Government must necessarily await the 
actual occurrence or threatened probability of some official 
transaction in conflict with its treaty rights. But with the 
proper information before it, the Department would undoubt- 
edly instruct you to anticipate any transaction of this cliaracter 
by such diplomatic remonstrance as our relations witli Hawaii 
would justify. 

It is difficult to say that the information derived through the 
newspapers in reference to a supposed Coolie convention with 
Great Britain is of a character to require the official interven- 
tion of this Government. But I take it for granted that, since 
the return of King Kalakaua, you will be able to learn whether 
such a convention is contemplated ; and if, in your opinion, 
there is enough in the general rumors to warrant it, you will 
consider yourself as instructed to make formal inquiry of the 
Hawaiian Government whether such a project is entertained. 

You say that the proposed convention provides for a — 

" ' protector of the coolie immigrants,' who tries all cases of disputes arising 
among the coolies themselves, and, also, between coolies and citizens of the 
country where they reside ; and cases of appeal from his judgment go, not 
to the courts of the country, but to the British consul or diplomatic repre- 
sentative." 

I do not understand whether this is a recital from some exist- 
ing convention or a rumor of what the contemplated conven- 
tion is expected to be. 

In the treaty between Great Britain and the Netherlands 
relative to emigration of laborers from India to the Dutch 
colony of Surinam, signed in 1870 and ratified in 1872 (the 
most recent to which I have been able to refer), I find the 
following provision : — 

" XIX. All emigTants within the provision of this convention shall, in the 
same manner as other subjects of the British Crown, and conformably to 
the ordinary rules of international law, enjoy in the Netherland colony the 
right of claiming the assistance of the "British consular agent ; and no 
obstacle shall be opposed of the laborers resorting to the consular agent, and 
communicating with him, without prejudice, however, to the obligations 
arising out of his engagements." 

Properly interpreted and fairly applied, I do not see any 
reasonable ground of objection to this or to a similar provision. 
But a convention containing stipulations such as you describe 



392 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDEXCE. 

would be very different. To secure to the coolie immigrants 
from India, who are unquestionably British subjects, such an ex- 
treme privilege of extraterritoriality would be extending to them 
advantages not possessed by the subjects of any other power. 
As Articles VIII. and X. of the treaty between the United 
States and the Hawaiian Islands of 1849, guarantee to the citi- 
zens and consular officers of the United States the treatment of 
the most favored nation and a particijDation in all privileges 
granted to others, the United States would have to insist upon 
equal treatment for its citizens and consuls. It can scarcely be 
doubted that other powers would make the same demand. 

A consideration of the embarrassment wliich such a condition 
of foreign rights and privileges would create for the Hawaiian 
Government would present almost insuperable difficulties to 
such a convention. 

But if negotiations such as you describe are really in progress, 
you will ask for an interview with the secretary for foreign 
affairs and make the following representation of the views of 
the United States : — 

The Government of the United States has, with unvarying 
consistency, manifested respect for the independence of the 
Hawaiian Kingdom and an earnest desire for the welfare of its 
people. It has always felt and acted on the conviction that the 
possession of the islands by a peaceful and prosperous power, 
with wliich there was no possibility of controversy or collision, 
was most desirable, in reference to its own large and rapidly 
increasing interests on the Pacific. It has declined, even at the 
request of the Hawaiian people, to assume over their affairs a 
Protectorate, which would only be a thinly disguised domination, 
and it has confined its efforts and influence to strensrthenine: 
their Government and opening to their commerce and enterprise 
the readiest and most profitable connection with its own mar- 
kets. But this policy has been based upon our belief in the real 
and substantial independence of Hawaii. The Government of 
the United States has always avowed and now repeats that, 
under no circumstances, will it permit the transfer of the terri- 
tory or sovereignty of these islands to any of the European 
powers. It is needless to re-state the reasons upon which that 
determination rests. It is too obvious for argument that the 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOINI. 393 

possession of these islands by a great maritime Power would 
not only be a dangerous diminution of the just and necessary 
influence of the United States in the waters of the Pacific, but 
in case of international difficulty it would be a positive threat 
to American interests too important to be lightly risked. 

Neither can the Government of the United States allow an 
arrangement which, by diplomatic finesse or legal technicality, 
substitutes for the native and legitimate constitutional Govern- 
ment of Hawaii, the controlling influence of a Foreign Power. 
That is not the real and substantial independence which it 
desires to see and which it is prepared to support. This 
Government would consider a scheme by which a large mass of 
British subjects, forming in time not improbably the majority 
of its population, should be introduced into Hawaii, be made 
independent of the native Government, and be ruled by British 
authorities, judicial and diplomatic, as one entirely inconsistent 
with the friendly relations now existing between us, as trench- 
ing upon treaty rights which we have secured by no small con- 
sideration, and as certain to involve the two countries in irritat- 
ing and unprofitable discussion. 

In thus instructing you, however, I must impress upon you 
that much is trusted to your discretion. There would be 
neither propriety nor wisdom in making such declarations un- 
necessarily or prematurely. If, therefore, you find that the pro- 
posed convention is not one with the extreme provisions to 
which you refer, or if you have reason to believe that your rep- 
resentations of the unfriendly impression which it would make 
here will be sufficient to change the purpose of the Hawaiian 
Government, you will confine yourself to ordinary diplomatic 
remonstrance. In any event, it will be prudent to indicate 
that such would, in your opinion, be the view taken by this 
Government before making the formal protest, which, under 
the contingency of persistent adverse action on the part of the 
Hawaiian Government, you are authorized to make. 



394 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

[A few days after the foregoing, Mr. Blaine sent a supplementary and ex- 
planatory dispatch to Mr. Comly, from which the following extract is taken. It 
contains the essential part.] 

The policy of this country with regard to the Pacific is the 
natural complement to its Atlantic policy. The history of our 
European relations for fifty years shows the jealous concern 
with which the United States has guarded its control of the 
coast from foreign interference, and this without extension of 
territorial possession beyond the main land. Its aim has 
always been to preserve the friendly neutrality of the adjacent 
States and insular possessions. Its attitude toward Cuba is in 
point. That rich island, the key to the Gulf of Mexico, and 
the field for our most extended trade in the Western Hemi- 
sphere, is, though in the hands of Spain, a part of the American 
commercial system. Our relations, present and prospective, 
toward Cuba, have never been more ably set forth than in the 
remarkable note addressed by my predecessor, Mr. Secretary 
Everett, to the ministers of Great Britain and France in Wash- 
ington, on the 1st of December, 1852, in rejection of the sug- 
gested tripartite alliance forever to determine the neutrality of 
the Spanish Antilles. In response to the proposal that the 
United States, Great Britain, and France should severally and 
collectively agree to forbid the acquisition of control over Cuba, 
by any or all of them, Mr. Everett showed that, without forcing 
or even coveting possession of the island, its condition was es- 
sentially an American question ; that the renunciation forever 
by this Government of contingent interest therein would be far 
broader than the like renunciation by Great Britain or France ; 
that if ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily be- 
come American, and not fall under any other European domi- 
nation, and that the ceaseless movement of segregation of 
American interests from European control and unification in a 
broader American sphere of independent life could not and 
should not be checked by any arbitrary agreement. 

Nearly thirty years have demonstrated the wisdom of the 
attitude then maintained by Mr. Everett and have made indis- 
pensable its continuance and its extension to all parts of the 
American Atlantic system where a disturbance of the existing 
status might be attempted in the interest of foreign Powers. 



THE UNITED STATES AND THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOM. 395 

The present attitude of this Government toward any European 
project for the control of an Isthmian route is but the logical 
sequence of the resistance made in 1852 to the attempted 
pressure of an active foreign influence in the West Indies. 

Hawaii, although much farther from the Californian coast 
than is Cuba from the Floridian peninsula, holds in the western 
sea much the same position as Cuba in the Atlantic. It is the 
key to the maritime dominion of the Pacific States, as Cuba is 
the key to the Gulf trade. The material possession of Hawaii 
is not desired by the United States any more than was that of 
Cuba. But under no circumstances can the United States per- 
mit any change in the territorial control of either which would 
out it adrift from the American system, Avhereto they both 
indispensably belong. 

In this aspect of the question, it is readily seen with what 
concern this Government must view any tendency toward in- 
troducing into Hawaii new social elements, destructive of its 
necessarily American character. The steady diminution of the 
native population of the islands, amounting to some ten per 
cent between 1872 and 1878, and still continuing, is doubtless 
a cause of great alarm to the Government of the kingdom, and 
it is no wonder that a solution should be sought with eagerness 
in any apparently practicable quarter. The problem, however, 
is not to be met by a substitution of Mongolian supremacy for 
native control — as seems at first sight possible through the 
rapid increase in Chinese immigration to the islands. Neither 
is a wholesale introduction of the coolie element, professedly 
Anglo-Indian, likely to afford any more satisfactory outcome to 
the difficulty. The Hawaiian Islands cannot be joined to the 
Asiatic system. If they drift from their independent station it 
must be toward assimilation and identification with the Ameri- 
can system, to which they belong by the operation of natural 
laws, and must belong by the operation of political necessity. 

I have deemed it necessary to go, with somewhat of detail, 
into the real nature of our relations toward Hawaii, in order 
that you may intelligently construe my recent instructions in 
the light of our true and necessary policy on the Pacific. It 
may also tend to simplify your intercourse with the native Gov- 
ernment if you are in a position to disabuse the minds of its 



396 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

statesmen of any belief or impression "that our course is selfishly 
intrusive, or looks merely to the exclusive retention of tran- 
sient advantages of local commerce, in which other countries 
seek a share. The United States was one of the first among 
the great nations of the world to take an active interest in the 
upbuilding of Hawaiian independence and the creation of a new 
and potential life for its peoj)le. It has consistently endeavored, 
and with success, to enlarge the material prosperity of Hawaii 
on an independent basis. It proposes to be equally unremit- 
ting in its efforts hereafter to maintain and develop the advan- 
tages which have accrued to Hawaii and to draw closer the ties 
which imperatively unite it to the great body of American 
commonwealths. 

In this line of action the United States does its simple duty 
both to Hawaii and itself; and it cannot permit such obvious 
neglect of National interest as Avould be involved by silent 
acquiescence in any movement looking to a lessening of those 
American ties and the substitution of alien and hostile interests. 
It firmly believes that the position of the Hawaiian Islands as 
the key to the dominion of the American Pacific demands their 
neutrality, to which end it will earnestly co-operate with the 
native Government. If, through any cause, the maintenance 
of such a position of neutrality should be found by Hawaii to 
be impracticable, this Government would then unhesitatingly 
meet the altered situation by seeking an avowedly American 
solution for the grave issues presented. 

The communication to the Hawaiian Government of the 
views herein expressed is left, both as to manner and extent, to 
your own discretion. If the treaty relations with Great Britain, 
of which my last instruction treats, prove to be of such a nature 
as to require the communication of a formal protest to the 
Hawaiian minister of Foreign affairs, it would probably be wise 
for you to give him a copy of this dispatch as a just and tem- 
perate exposition of the intentions of this Government, and a 
succinct explanation of the reasons which have induced such 
a protest. 



ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER III. OF RUSSIA. 397 



ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER III., EMPEROR 
OF RUSSIA. 



[Secretary Blaine to Honorable John W. Foster, Minister to Russia.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, April 13, 1881. 

Sir, — Your dispatch of the 18th ultimo, enclosing a communi- 
cation from the Russian Minister of Foreign affairs in response 
to the proceedings of the Senate of the United States touching 
the death of the late Emperor, has been received, and by order 
of the President laid before the Senate. 

The President desires, more fully than in his communication 
by telegraph, to convey to the Emperor the sentiments of 
respect and gratitude toward his father which animate the 
Government and people of the United States. They can never 
forget the course pursued by the late Emperor toward this 
country when our National existence was imperiled by civil 
strife. The peculiar danger to which we were exposed from 
the intervention of European Powers was clearly perceived by 
all the intelligent friends of the Union. Though feeling equal 
to any emergency that might arise in the course of the appall- 
ing conflict, the Government of the United States realized that 
the contest would be rendered more desperate and more bloody 
if any of the great Powers of Europe should espouse the cause 
of the insurrectionary States. 

A dynasty, not now in power, but then ruling over a country 
in which the people have always been our friends, had resolved 
upon intervention if co-operation with other nations could be 
secured. This design, so fraught with danger to liberty and 
constitutional government on both sides of the Atlantic, was 
promptly met by the late Emperor with a refusal to take any 



398 DIPLOMATIC CORRESrONDENCE. 

unfriendly step against the United States. Nor did his Imperial 
Majesty stop at merely declining to join a coalition adverse to 
us ; he openly declared in our favor, and fearing, from what he 
knew of designs against us, that other Powers might unwarily 
be drawn into a hostile attitude towards this country, the 
Emperor sent to the waters which both expose and protect our 
National Capital a large and powerful fleet of war-vessels as a 
proclamation to the world of his sym^jathy in our struggle and 
of his readiness to strike a blow on the side of the Union if any 
Foreign Power should strike a blow in aid of the insurrection. 

In our happily re-united country, now contented and pros- 
perous throughout all its borders, those who upheld the Union 
and those who were arrayed against it join in equal gratitude 
to the Emperor who aided in saving all our people from the 
embarrassment and danger of foreign intervention. 

The Government of the United States does not recall these 
historical facts from a desire to awaken unpleasant recollections 
in any breast, but as a tribute to the memory of a Sovereign 
whose great power, at a most important crisis, was exerted on 
the side of our Union, even at the risk of plunging his own 
Empire into war. 

The President requests that you will seek an audience with 
the Emperor and communicate these expressions of regard 
wliich the people of the United States have entertained for his 
father. Assure the Emperor that the Government and people 
of this country abhor assassination, and can never see in it a 
remedy for political evils. There is no instance in history 
where an abuse has been corrected, a wrong righted, an ojipres- 
sion ameliorated, or a reform promoted, by assassination. The 
people of the United States have too fresh a recollection of a 
similar crime at home, and they know too well that assassina- 
tion always strikes wildly and blindly, willfully and wickedly. 

Congratulate the Emperor upon his accession to the throne, 
and, on behalf of the Government and the people of the United 
States, extend to him the heartiest wishes for his success as a 
Sovereign, and for the prosperity and happiness of the Russian 
people. 



BARON STEUBEN'S FAMILY AT YOKKTOWN. 399 



BARON STEUBEN'S FAMILY AT YORKTOWN. 



IDispatch from Secretary Blaine to Honorable Andrew D. White, United 
States Minister to Germany.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, July oO, 1881. 

Sir, — During the darkest period of the Revolutionary war 
a German soldier of character and distinction tendered his 
sword in aid of American independence. Frederick William 
Augustus, Baron Steuben, joined Washington at Valley Forge, 
in the memorable and disastrous winter of 1778. He attested 
the sincerity of his attachment to the patriot cause by espousing 
it when its fortunes were adverse, its prospects gloomy, and its 
hopes, but for the intense zeal of the people, well-nigh crushed. 

Baron Steuben was cordially welcomed by Washington, and 
immediately placed on duty as Inspector-General of the army. 
A detailed history of his military career in America would 
form an epitome of the Revolutionary struggle. He had served 
in the Seven Years' War on the staff of the great Frederick, 
and had acquired in the campaigns of that master of military 
science a skill and experience sorely needed by the untrained 
soldiers of the Continental army. The discipline and effec- 
tive organization which, under the commanding patronage of 
Washington, were at once imparted to the American army by 
the zeal and diligence of Steuben transformed the volunteers 
and raw levies into veterans, who successfully met the British 
regulars in all the campaigns of that prolonged struggle. 

The final surrender of the British army under Lord C'orn- 
wallis occurred at Yorktown, Va., on the nineteenth day of 
October, 1781. Baron Steuben bore a conspicuous part in the 
arduous campaign which ended so auspiciously for the Conti- 
nental army, and it fell to his lot to receive the first official 



400 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

notification of the proposed capitulation, and to bear it to the 
illustrious Commander-in-chief. 

The Centennial of that great event in American history is to 
be celebrated with appropriate observances and ceremonies on 
the approaching anniversary. I am directed by the President 
to tender, through you, an invitation to the representatives of 
Baron Steuben's family in Germany to attend the celebration 
as guests of the Government of the United States. You will 
communicate the invitation through the Imperial minister of 
foreign affairs, and will express to him the very earnest desire 
of this Government that it shall be accepted. 

Those who come as the representatives of Baron Steuben's 
family will be assured of as warm a welcome in our day of peace 
and prosjDerity as was given to their illustrious kinsman in 
the dark days of adversity and war. They will be the honored 
guests of fifty millions of Americans, a vast number of whom 
have German blood in their veins and constitute one of the 
most worthy and valuable elements that make up the strength 
of the Republic. Intensely devoted, with patriotic fidelity, to 
America, they yet retain, cherish and transmit the most affec- 
tionate memory of Fatherland. To these the visit of Baron 
Steuben's relatives will have something of the revival of family 
ties, while to all Americans, of whatever origin, the presence of 
German guests will afford fitting opportunity of testifying their 
respect for that great country within whose imperial limits are 
included so much of human grandeur and human progress. 



JOINT IXTERVENTIOX IX SOUTH AMERICAN WAR. 401 



FRANCE PROPOSES JOINT INTERVENTION IN 
THE SOUTH AMERICAN WAR. 



[Secretary Blaine to Honorable L. P. Morton, Minister to France.] 

Department of State, 

Washington, Sept. 5, 1881. 

Sm, — I acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch of Aug. 
11, 1881, giving an account of your interview on the da}- pre- 
vious with the President of tlie Republic in regard to the atti- 
tude and correspondent relations of France, Great Britain, and 
the United States with the South American States, Chili and 
Peru. 

The suggestions offered by President Grevy concerning the 
situation of affairs in Peru have received the respectful consid- 
eration due to the utterances of so eminent a statesman. This 
Government agrees with the Chief Magistrate of France in 
profoundly deploring the disorders and sufferings which have 
already fallen upon, and those which still impend over the 
people of Peru, and fully shares the humane and enlightened 
sentiments which have inspired in him a personal interest in 
that unfortunate struggle, and have induced him to suggest a 
concerted effort by France, Great Britain, and the United States 
to bring the conflict to an end. 

Interventions of this character have been frequent in the 
diplomatic history of Europe and have been sometimes followed 
by beneficial results in preserving the equilibrium of the 
Powers. But the United States has not belonged to that 
system of States, of which France and Great Britain are im- 
portant members, and has never participated in the adjustment 
of their contentions. Neither interest nor inclination leads this 
country to desire a voice in the discussion of those questions. 



402 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

Our relations to the States of tlie American continent, however, 
are widely different, and the situation is so nearly reversed, that 
this Government, while appreciating the disinterested motive 
that inspired the suggestion, is constrained gravely to doubt the 
expediency of a joint intervention with European powers in 
the affairs of American States, either by material pressure or by 
moral or political influence. These Republics of America are 
younger sisters of this Government. Their proximity of situa- 
tion, similarity in origin and frame of Government, unity of 
political interest on all questions of foreign intercourse, and 
their geographical remoteness from Europe have naturally given 
to American States close and especial relations to each other, 
and in the course of time removed them farther from the Euro- 
pean system. 

The commercial and political interests of the United States 
on this continent, transcend in extent and importance those of 
any other Power, and where these interests are deeply involved 
this Government must preserve a position in which its influence 
will be most inde^^endent and most efficient. The United 
States has watched the progress of the struggle between Peru 
and Chili with constant anxiety, and has endeavored, as opi)or- 
tunity offered, to arrange terms of peace. While the interest 
which President Grdvy has manifested for the cause of peace, 
and the sympathy he has shown with the unhappy victims of 
this war, find an earnest response here, both from the Govern- 
ment and the people, the United States must decline to enter 
into negotiations with European powers for a joint intervention 
in the affairs of Chili and Peru. You will communicate this 
conclusion to the French Government. 



PROPOSED PEACE CONGRESS OF AMERICAN STATES. 403 



PROPOSED PEACE COXGRESS OF AMERICAN 

STATES. 



[The project of a Peace Congress of American Nations was originally ap- 
proved by President Garfield. After his death President Arthur directed that 
the invitations be issued. The following is a copy of the invitation sent to the 
Argentine Republic. A similar letter was sent to the other Independent Gov- 
ernments of North and iSouth America.] 

Department of State, 

Washinoton, Nov. 29, 1881. 

Sir, — The attitude of the United States with respect to the 
question of general peace on the American continent is well 
known through its persistent efforts for years past to avert the 
evils of warfare, or, these efforts failing, to bring positive con- 
flicts to an end through pacific counsels or the advocacy of 
impartial arbitration. 

This attitude has been consistently maintained, and always 
with such fairness as to leave no room f(n' imputing to our 
Government any motive except the humane and disinterested 
one of saving the kindred States of America from the bur- 
dens of war. The position of the United States as the lead- 
ing Power of the New World might well give to its Govern- 
ment a claim to authoritative utterance for the purpose of 
quieting discord among its neighbors, with all of whom the 
most friendly relations exist. Nevertheless, the good offices of 
this Government are not and have not at any time been ten- 
dered with a show of dictation or compulsion, but only as 
exhibiting the solicitous good will of a common friend. 

For some years past a growing disposition has been mani- 
fested by certain States of Central and South America to refer 
disputes aifectiug grave questions of international relationship 
and boundaries to arbitration rather than to the sword. It has 
been on several such occasions a source of profound satisfaction 



404 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPOXDENCE. 

to the Government of the United States to see that this country 
is in a Large measure looked to by all the American Powers as 
their friend and mediator. The just and impartial counsel of the 
President in such cases has never been withheld, and his efforts 
have been rewarded by tlie prevention of sanguinary strife or 
angry contentions between peoples whom we regard as brethren. 

The existence of tliis growing tendency convinces the Presi- 
dent that the time is ripe for a proposal that shall enlist the good 
will and active co-operation of all the States of the Western 
Hemisphere, both north and south, in the interest of humanity 
and for the common weal of nations. He conceives that none 
of the Governments of America can be less alive than our own 
to the dangers and horrors of a state of war, and especially of 
war between kinsmen. He is sure that none of the Chiefs 
of Governments on the continent can be less sensitive than he 
is to the sacred duty of making every endeavor to do away 
with the chances of fratricidal strife. He looks with hopeful 
confidence to such active assistance from them as will serve to 
show the broadness of our common humanity and the strength 
of the ties which bind us all together as a harmonious system 
of American commonwealths. 

Impressed with these views, the President extends to all the 
independent countries of North and South America an earnest 
invitation to participate in a General Congress to be held in 
the city of Washington on the twenty-fourth day of November, 
1882, for the purpose of considering and discussing the methods 
of preventing war between the nations of America. He desires 
that the attention of the Congress shall be strictly confined to 
this one great object ; that its sole aim shall be to seek a way 
of permanently averting the horrors of cruel and bloody combat 
between countries, oftenest of one blood and speech, or the 
even worse calamity of internal commotion and civil strife ; 
that it shall regard the burdensome and far-reaching conse- 
quences of such struggles ; exhausted finances, oppressive debt, 
onerous taxation, ruined cities, paralyzed industries, devastated 
fields, ruthless conscription, the slaugliter of men, the grief of 
the widow and the orphan; — with a legacy of embittered resent- 
ments, that long survive those who provoked them and heavily 
afflict the innocent generations that come after. 



PROPOSED PEACE CONGRESS OF AMERICAN STATES. 405 

The President is especially desirous to have it understood 
that, in putting forth this invitation, the United States does not 
assume the position of counseling, or attempting to counsel, 
through the voice of the Congress, any determinate solution of 
existing questions which may now divide any of the countries 
of America. Such questions cannot properly come before the 
Congress. Its mission is higher. It is to provide for the inter- 
ests of all in the future, not to settle the individual differences 
of the present. For this reason especially the President has 
indicated a day for the assembling of the Congress so far in tlie 
future as to leave good ground for hope that b}^ the time named 
the present situation on the South Pacific coast will be happily 
terminated, and that those engaged in the contest may take 
peaceable part in the discussion and solution of the general 
question affecting in an equal degree the well-being of all. 

It seems also desirable to disclaim in advance any purpose on 
the part of the United States to prejudge the issues to be pre- 
sented to the Congress. It is far from the intent of this Gov- 
ernment to appear before the Congress as in any sense the pro- 
tector of its neighbors or the predestined and necessary arbi- 
trator of their disputes. The United States will enter into the 
deliberations of the Congress on the same footing as the other 
Powers represented, and with the loyal determination to ap- 
proach any proposed solution, not merely in its own interest, or 
with a view to asserting its own power, but as a single member 
among many co-ordinate and co-equal States. So far as the 
influence of this Government may be potential, it will be 
exerted in the direction of conciliating whatever conflicting 
interests of blood, or government, or historical tradition may 
necessarily come together in response to a call embracing 
elements so vast and diverse. 

You will present these views to the IMinister of Foreign rela- 
tions of the Argentine Republic, enlarging, if need be, in such 
terms as will readily occur to you, upon the great mission 
which it is within the power of the proposed Congress to accom- 
plish in the interest of humanity, and upon the firm purpose 
of the United States to maintain a position of the most absolute 
and impartial friendship towards all. You will thereupon, in 
the name of the President of the United States, tender to His 



40G DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 

Excellency the President of the Argentine Republic a formal 
invitation to send two commissioners to the Congress, provided 
Avitli such powers and instructions on behalf of their Govern- 
ment as will enable them to consider the questions brought 
before that body within the limit of submission contemplated 
by this invitation. The United States, as well as the other 
Powers, will, in like manner, be represented by two commis- 
sioners, so that equality and impartiality will be amj^ly secured 
in the proceedings of the Congress. 

In delivering this invitation through the IMinister of foreign 
affairs, you will read this dispatch to him and leave with him a 
copy, intimating that an answer is desired by this Government 
as promptly as the just consideration of so important a proposi- 
tion will permit. 

Note. — Tlie invitation for a Congress of American Nations was practically 
cancelled by Secretary Frelingluiysen on the 9tli of January, 1S82, some six weeks 
after it was issued. The formal wiihdrawal of the invitation was some months 
later. 

But before the intelligence of Secretary Frelinghuysen's action reached the 
Nations invited, half of them and by far the most populous half, had cordially 
accepted the invitation. 

Mexico in accepting said, "The attitude which the "Washington Government 
has assuTued in this humanitarian enterprise is entitled to the eulogy of the entire 
world and to the most favorable consideration of the nations immediately inter- 
ested therein." 

The five States of Central America accepted the invitation. Costa Rica " ex- 
pressed enthusiasm upon the subject." When the invitation was withdrawn, 
Guatemala "expressed great regret that a project of such vital importance to 
the Central American States should have failed even temporarily and hoped it 
would be revived at no distant day." 

Venezuela accepted promptly. " It is certainly," said the distinguished Presi- 
dent Guzman Blanco, "a source of satisfaction that the first Republic of the 
world, loyal to her noble antecedents, should consent to preside over the deliber- 
ations of a Peace Congress that proposes to devise means of ending future dis- 
agreements in America without any appeal to arms with its terrible legacies." 

"The Government of Brazil," so wrote our Minister, Mr. Osboru, "has ac- 
cepted the invitation to the Peace Congress, and I am not without reasons for 
knowing that His Majesty the Emperor looks forward to the assembling of the 
Congress with interest and hopes that great good will result therefrom." 

When intelligence of the withdrawal of the invitation reached Rio Janeiro, 
some of tlie Eimieror's Ministers disclosed their hostility to the Peace Congress. 
Mr. Osborn intimates that these ministers were acting iu accordance with 
"European influence." 

The Govermiients not heard from when the invitation was withdrawn are 
Colombia, Peru, Chili, Argentine Confederation, Uruguay, and Paraguay. 



POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



WITHDRAWAL OF INVITATIONS TO A PEACE 

CONGRESS. 



[The following letter was sent to President Arthur, Feb. 3, 1S82, by ex- 
Secretary Blaine : — ] 

To THE President of the United States : — The sug- 
gestion that a Congress of all American nations should assemble 
in the city of Washington for the purpose of agreeing on such a 
basis of arbitration for International troubles as would remove 
all possibility of- war in the Western Hemisphere, was warmly 
approved by your predecessor. His assassination on tlie 2d of 
last July necessarily suspended all action on the part of the 
Government. After your accession to the Presidency I ac- 
quainted you with the project, and submitted to you a draft for 
the invitation. You received the suggestion with appreciative 
consideration, and, after carefully examining the form of invi- 
tation, directed it to be sent. It was accordingly dispatched in 
November to the independent Governments of America, North 
and South, including all, from the Empire of Brazil to the 
smallest republic. In a communication, recently sent to the 
Senate, addressed by the present Secretary of State the 9th of 
last month to Mr. Trescott, now on a special mission to Peru 
and Chili, I was greatly surprised to find a proposition looking 
to the annulment of these invitations, and I was still more 
surprised when I read the reasons assigned. I quote Mr. 
Frelinghuysen's language : — 

" The United States is at peace with all nations of the earth, and the 
President wishes hereafter to determine whether it will conduce to the gen- 
eral peace, which he would cherish and promote, for this Government to 
enter into negotiations and consultation for the promotion of peace with 
selected friendly nationalities without extending the line of confidence to 

407 



408 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

other people with whom the United States is on equally friendly terms. If 
such partial contidence would create jealousy and ill will, peace, the object 
souyiit by such consultation, w^uld not be promoted. The principles con- 
troliiug the relations of the republics of this hemisphere with other nation- 
alities may, on investigation, be found to be so well established that little 
would be gained at this time by re-opening the subject, which is not novel." 

If I correctly apprehend the meaning of these words, it is 
that we might offend some European powers if we should hold 
in the United States a Congress of "selected nationalities " of 
America. This is certainly a new position for the United States 
and one which I earnestly beg you will not permit this Gov- 
ernment to assume. European Powers assemble in Congress 
whenever an object seems to them of sufficient gravity to jus- 
tify it. I have never heard of their consulting the Government 
of the United States in regard to the propriety of their so 
assembling, nor have I ever known of their inviting an Ameri- 
can representative to be present, nor would there in my opin- 
ion be any good reason for their so doing. Two Presidents 
©f the United States in the year 1881 adjudged it to be expedi- 
ent that American Powers should meet in Congress for the sole 
purj)ose of agreeing upon some basis for arbitration of differ- 
ences that may arise between them, and for the prevention, as 
far as possible, of wars in the future. If that movement is now 
to be arrested for fear it may give offense in Europe, the volun- 
tary humiliation of the United States could not be more com- 
plete, unless we should petition European Governments for the 
privilege of holding the Congress. 

It is difficult to see how this country could be placed in 
a less enviable position than would be secured by sending in 
November a cordial invitation to all the Independent Nations 
in America to meet in Washington for the sole purpose of 
devising measures of peace, and in January recalling the 
invitation for fear it might create "jealousy and ill will " on the 
part of monarchical governments in Europe. It would be dif- 
ficult to devise a more effective way for the United States 
to lose the friendship of its American neighbors, and it 
would certainly not add to our prestige in the European world. 
Nor can I see, Mr. President, how European Governments 
sliould feel " jealousy and ill will " toward the United States 
because of an effort on its part to assure lasting peace between 



WITHDRAWAL OF IXVITATIOXS TO PEACE CONGRESS. 409 

the nations of America, unless indeed it be the interest of the 
European Powers that the American nations shoukl at intervals 
fall into war, and bring reproach on Republican institutions. 
But from that very circumstance I see an additional and power- 
ful motive for American Governments to be at peace among 
themselves. The United States is indeed at peace with all the 
world, as Mr. Frelinghuysen well says; but there are, and luive 
been, serious troubles between other American republics. Peru, 
Chili and Bolivia have been for more than two years engaged in 
a desperate conflict. It was the fortunate intervention of the 
United States last spring that averted war between Chili and 
the Argentine Republic. Guatemala is at this moment asking 
the United States to interpose its good offices with Mexico to 
keep off war. 

These important facts were all communicated in your late 
message to Congress. It was the existence or menace of these 
wars that influenced President Garfield, and, as I supposed, 
influenced yourself, to desire a friendly conference of all the 
nations of America to devise methods of permanent peace and 
consequent prosperity for all. Shall the United States now 
turn back, hold aloof, and refuse to exert its great moral power 
for the advantage of its weaker neighbors ? If you have not 
formally recalled the invitation to a Peace Congress, ]Mr. Presi- 
dent, I beg you to consider well the effect of so doing. Tlie 
invitation was not mine. It was yours. I performed only the 
part of Secretary of State to advise, and to draft. You spoke in 
the name of the United States to each of the independent nations 
of America. To revoke that invitation for any cause w^ould ])e 
embarrassing; to revoke it for avow^ed fear of "jealousy and 
ill will " on the part of European Powers Avould appeal as little 
to American pride as to American hospitality. Those you have 
invited may decline, and, having now cause to doubt their wel- 
come, will perhaps do so. Tliis would break up the Congress, 
but it would not touch our dignity. 

Beyond the philanthropic and Christian ends to be obtained 
by the American conference, devoted to peace and good will 
among men, we might well hope for material advantages as a 
result of a better understanding and closer friendship with the 
uations of America. At present the condition of trade between 



410 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

the United States and its American neighbors is unsatisfactory 
to us, and even deplorable. According to the official statistics 
of our own Treasury Department the balance against us in 
American trade last year was 8120,000,000 in coin — a sum 
greater than the yearly product of the gold and silver mines iu 
the United States. This large balance was paid by us in foreign 
exchange, and a very large proportion of it went to England, 
where shipments of cotton, provisions, and breadstuffs supplied 
the money. If any thing should change or check the balance in 
our favor in EurojDean trade, our commercial exchanges with 
Spanish America would drain us of our reserve of gold coin at 
a rate exceeding 8100,000,000 per annum, and might precipitate 
the suspension of specie payment in this country. Such a 
result at home would be worse than a little "jealousy and 
ill will " abroad. 

I do not say, Mr. President, that the holding of a Peace Con- 
gress will necessarily change the currents of trade, but it will 
bring us into kindly relations with all the American nations; it 
will promote tiie reign of law and order ; it will increase pro- 
duction and consumption ; it will stimulate the demand for arti- 
cles which American manufacturers can furnish with profit. It 
will, at all events, be a friendly and auspicious beginning in the 
direction of American influence and American trade in a large 
field which we have hitherto neglected, and which has been 
practically monopolized by our commercial rivals in Europe. 

As Mr. Frelinghuysen's dispatch foreshadowing an abandon- 
ment of a Peace Congress has been made public by your 
direction, I deem it a matter of propriety and justice to give 
this letter to the press. 

I am, Mr. President, with great respect, j^our ever obedient 
servant, 

JAMES G. BLAIXE. 



FOllEIGX POLICY OF GARFIELD ADMIX' ISTRATION. 411 



FOREIGN POLICY OF THE GARFIELD 
ADMINISTRATION. 



PEACE CONGRESS OF AMERICAN NATIONS. — TRADE RELATIONS 
WITH SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA. 

The foreign policy of President Garfield's Administration 
had two principal objects in view : first, to bring about peace, 
and prevent future wars in North and South America ; second, 
to cultivate such friendly, commercial relations with all Ameri- 
can countries as would lead to a large increase in the export 
trade of the United States, by supplying those fabrics in which 
we are abundantly able to compete with the manufacturing 
nations of Europe. 

To attain the second object the first must be accomplished. 
It would be idle to attempt the development and enlargement 
of our trade with the countries of North and South America 
if that trade were liable at any unforeseen moment to be vio- 
lently interrupted by such wars as that which for three years 
has engrossed and almost engulfed Chili, Peru, and Bolivia ; as 
that which was barely averted by the friendly offices of the 
United States between Chili and the Argentine Republic ; as 
that which has been postponed by the same good offices, but 
not decisively abandoned, between Mexico and Guatemala; 
as that which is threatened between Brazil and Uruguay ; as 
that which is even now foreshadowed between Brazil and the 
Argentine States. Peace is essential to commerce, is the very 
life of honest trade, is the solid basis of international pros- 
perity; yet there is no part of the world wdiere a resort to 
arms is so prompt as in the Spanish-American Republics. 
Those Republics have grown out of the old Colonial divisions, 
formed from capricious grants to favorites by royal charter, 



412 rOLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

and their bonndarics arc in many cases not clearly defined and 
consequently afford the basis of continual disputes, breaking 
forth too often in open war. To induce the Spanish-American 
States to adopt some peaceful mode of adjusting their fre- 
quently recurring contentions was regarded by the late Presi- 
dent as one of the most honorable and useful ends to which 
the diplomacy of the United States could contribute — useful 
especially to those States by securing permanent peace within 
their borders, and useful to our own country by affording a 
coveted opportunity for extending its commerce and securing 
enlarged fields for our products and manufactures. 

Instead of friendly intervention here and there, negotiating a 
treaty between two countries to-day, securing a truce between 
two others to-morrow, it was apparent to the late President that 
a more comprehensive plan should be adopted if war was to 
cease in the Western Hemisphere. It was evident that certain 
European Powers had in the past been interested in promoting 
strife between the Spanish-American countries, and might be 
so interested in the future, while the interest of the United 
States was wholly and always on the side of peace with all our 
American neighbors, and peace among them all. 

It was therefore the President's belief that incidental and 
partial adjustments failed to attain the desired end and that 
a common agreement of peace, permanent in its character and 
continental in its extent, should if possible be secured. To 
effect this end it had been resolved, before the fatal shot of 
July 2d, to invite all the independent Governments of Xorth 
and South America to meet in a Peace Congress at Washing- 
ton. The date to be assigned was the 15th of March, 1882, 
and the invitations would have been issued directly after the 
New England tour, which the President was not permitted to 
make. Nearly six months later, on the 22d of November, 
President Garfield's successor issued the invitations for the 
Peace Congress in the same spirit and with the same limita- 
tions and restrictions that had been originally designed. 

As soon as the project was understood in South America it 
received a most cordial approval, and some of the countries, 
not following the leisurely routine of diplomatic correspond- 
ence, made haste to accept the invitation. There can be no 



FOREIGX POLICY OF GARFIELD ADMIXISTRATIOX. 413 

doubt that within a brief period all the nations invited would 
have formally signified their readiness to attend the Congress. 
But in six weeks after the invitations had gone to the several 
countries, President Arthur caused them to be recalled, or at 
least sus|)ended. The subject was afterwards referred to Con- 
gress, in a special message, in which the President ably vindi- 
cated his Constitutional right to assemble the Peace Congress, 
but expressed a desire that the Legislative Department of the 
Government should give an opinion uj)on the expediency of 
the step before the Congress should be allowed to convene. 
Meanwhile the nations that received the invitation were in an 
embarrassing situation ; for after they were asked by the Presi- 
dent to come, they found that the matter had been reconsid- 
ered and referred to another department of the Government. 

This change was universally accepted as a practical though 
indirect abandonment of the project, for it was not from the 
first probable that Congress would take action upon the sub- 
ject. The good will and welcome of the invitation would be 
destroyed by a long debate in the Senate and House, in which 
the question would necessarily become intermixed with personal 
and party politics, and the project would be ultimately wrecked 
from the same cause and by the same process that destroyed 
the usefulness of the Panama Congress during the Administra- 
tion of John Quincy Adams when Mr. Clay was at the head 
of the State Department. The time for Congressional action 
would have been after the Peace Conference had closed its 
labors. The Conference could not agree upon any thing that 
would be binding upon the United States, unless assented to 
as a treaty by the Senate, or enacted into a law by both 
branches of Congress. The assembling of the Peace Confer- 
ence was not in derogation of any right or prerogative of the 
Senate or House. Tlie money necessary for the expenses of 
the Conference — which would not have exceeded ten thousand 
dollars — could not, with reason or propriety, have been with- 
held. If Congress had refused it, patriotism and philanthropy 
would have promptly supplied it. 

The Spanish-American States are in special need of the help 
which the Peace Congress would afford them. They require 
external pressure to keep them from war ; when at war they 



414 rOLITICAL DISCUSSIOXS. 

require external pressure to bring tliem to peace. Their out- 
breaks are not only frequent but are sanguinary and sonietinies 
cruel. Tlie inhabitants of those countries are a brave people, 
belonging to a race that has always been brave, descended of 
men that have always been proud. They are of hot temper, 
quick to take affront, ready to avenge a wrong whether real or 
fancied. They are at the same time generous and chivalrous, 
and though tending for years past to estrangement and aliena- 
tion from us, they would promptly respond to any advance 
made by the Great Republic of the North, as they have for two 
generations termed our Government. The moral influence 
upon the Spanish-American people of such an International 
assembly as the Peace Congress, called by the invitation and 
meeting under the auspices of the United States, WT)uld have 
proved beneficent and far-reaching. It would have raised the 
standard of their civilization. It would have turned their at- 
tention to the things of peace ; and the Southern continent, 
whose undeveloped wealth amazed Humboldt, might have re- 
ceived a new life, might have seen a new and splendid career 
opened to its inhabitants. 

Such friendly interventions as the proposed Peace Congress, 
and as the attempt to restore peace between Chili and Peru, 
fall within the line of both duty and interest on the part of the 
United States. Nations like individuals often require the aid 
of a common friend to restore relations of amity. Peru and 
Chili are in deploralde need of a wise and powerful n:iediator. 
Though exhausted by war, they are unable to make peace, and, 
unless aided by the intervention of a friend, political anarchy 
and social disorder will come to the conquered, and evils 
scarcely less serious to the conqueror. Our own Government 
cannot take the ground that it will not offer friendly interven- 
tion to settle troubles between American countries, unless at 
the same time it freely concedes to European Governments the 
right of such intervention, and thus consents to a practical 
destruction of the Monroe doctrine and an unlimited increase 
of European influence on this continent. The late special 
envoy to Peru and Chili, Mr. Trescott, gives it as his deliber- 
ate and published conclusion that if the instructions under 
which he set out upon his mission had not been revoked, peace 



FOREIGX rOLICY OF GARFIELD ADMIXISTRATIOX. 415 

between those angry belligerents would have been established as 
the result of his labors — necessarily to the great benefit of the 
United States. If our Government does not resume its efforts 
to secure peace in South America some European Government 
will be forced to perform that friendly office. The United States 
cannot play between nations the part of dog in the manger. 

A significant and important result would have followed 
the assembling of the Peace Congress. A friendship and an 
intimacy would have been established between the States of 
North and South America which must have enforced a closer 
commercial connection. A movement in the near future, as the 
legitimate outgrowth of assured peace, would, in all probability, 
have been a commercial conference at the City of jNIexico or at 
Rio Janeiro, whose deliberations would be directed to a better 
system of trade on the two continents. To such a conference 
the Domuiion of Canada could properly be asked to send repre- 
sentatives, as that Government is allowed by Great Britain a 
large liberty in regulating its trade relations. In the Peace 
Congress, to be composed of independent governments, the 
Dominion could not have taken part, and was consequently 
not invited. From this trade-conference of the two continents 
the United States could hardly have failed to gain great advan- 
tages. At present the commercial relations of this country 
with the Spanish-American countries, both continental and 
insular, are unsatisfactory and unprofitable — indeed, those 
relations are absolutely oppressive to the financial interests of 
the Government and people of the United States. In our 
current exchanges it requires about one hundred and twenty 
millions of dollars to pay the balance which Spanish America 
brings against us every year. This amount is fifty per cent 
more tlian the average annual product of the gold and silver 
mines of the United States during the past five years. Tliis 
vast sum does not of course go to Spanish America in coin, but 
it goes across the ocean in coin or its equivalent, to pay Euro- 
pean countries for manufactured articles which they furnish to 
Spanish America — a large proportion of which should be fur- 
nished by the manufacturers of the United States. 

At this point of the argument the Free-trader appears and 
declares that our Protective tariff destroys our power of eompe- 



416 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

tition with European countries, and tliat if we will abolish Pro- 
tection we shall soon have South-American trade. The answer 
is not sufficient, for to-day there are many articles which we can 
send to South America and sell as chea})ly as European manu- 
facturers can furnish them. It is idle, of course, to make this 
statement to the genuine apostle of Free Trade and the imjilaca- 
ble enemy of Protection, for the great postulate of his argument, 
the foundation of his creed, is that nothing can be made as 
cheaply in America as in Europe. Nevertheless facts are stub- 
born and the hard figures of arithmetic cannot be satisfactorily 
answered by airy figures of sjDeech. The truth remains that 
the coarser descriptions of cottons and cotton prints, boots and 
shoes, ordinary household furniture, harness for draught animals, 
agricultural implements of all kinds, doors, sashes and blinds, 
locks, bolts and hinges, silverware, plated ware, woodenware, 
ordinar}' papers and paper hangings, common vehicles, ordinary 
window-glass and glassware, rubber goods, coal oils, lard oils, 
kerosenes, white-lead, lead pipe and articles in which lead is a 
chief component, can be and are j)roduced as cheaply in the 
United States as in any other part of the world. The list of 
such articles might be lengthened by the addition of those 
classed as " notions," but only enough are given to show that 
this country would, with proper commercial arrangements, ex- 
port much more largely than it now does to Spanish America. 

In the trade relations of the world it does not follow that 
mere ability to produce as cheaply as another nation insures a 
division of an established market, or, indeed, any partici^Dation 
in it. France manufactures many articles as cheaply as Eng- 
land — some articles at even less cost. Portugal lies n-earer to 
France than to England, and the expense of transporting the 
French fabric to the Portuguese market is therefore less than 
the transportation of the English fabric. Yet Great Britain 
has almost a monopoly in the trade of Portugal. The same con- 
dition applies, though in a less degree, to the trade of Turkey, 
Syria and Egypt, which England holds to a much greater ex- 
tent than any of the other European nations that are able to 
produce the same fabric as cheaply. If it be said in answer 
that England has special trade relations by treaty with Portu- 
gal and special obligations binding the other countries, the 



FOREIGN POLICY OF GARFIELD ADMINISTRATION. 417 

ready answer is that she has no more favorable position with 
respect to those countries than can be readily and easily acquired 
by the United States with respect to all the countries of 
America. That end will be reached whenever the United 
States desires it and wills it, and is ready to take the steps 
necessary to secure it. At present the trade with Spanish 
America runs so strongly in channels adverse to us, that, beside 
our inability to furnish manufactured articles, we do not get 
the profit on our own raw products that are shipped there. Our 
petroleum reaches most of the Spanish-American ports after 
twice crossing the Atlantic, paying often a better profit to the 
European middle man who handles it than it does to the pro- 
ducer of the oil in the north-western counties of Pennsylvania. 
Flour and pork from the West reach Cuba by way of Spain, 
and though we buy and consume ninety per cent of the total 
products of Cuba, almost that proportion of her purchases are 
made in Europe — made, of course, with money furnished 
directly from our pockets. 

As our exports to Spanish America grow less, as European 
exports constantly grow larger, the balance against us will show 
an annual increase, and will continue to exhaust our supply of 
the precious metals. We are increasing our imports from South 
America, and the millions we annually pay for coffee, wool, 
hides, guano, cinchona, caoutchouc, cabinet woods, dye woods 
and other articles, go for the ultimate benefit of European 
manufacturers who take the gold from us and send their fabrics 
to Spanish America. If we could send our fabrics, our gold 
would stay at home and our general prosperity would be sen- 
sibly increased. But so long as we repel Spanish America, so 
long as we leave her to cultivate intimate relations with Europe 
alone, so long our trade relations will remain unsatisfactory and 
even embarrassing. Those countries sell to us very heavily. 
They buy from us very lightly. The amount they bring us in 
debt each year is larger than the heaviest aggregate balance of 
trade we have against us in the worst of times. The average 
balance against us for the whole world in the five most adverse 
years we ever experienced, was about one hundred millions of 
dollars. This plainly shows that in our European exchanges 
there is always a balance in our favor and that our chief defi- 



418 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

cieiicy arises from our ill-adjusted comiuercial relations ■vvith 
Spanish America. It follows that if our Spanish-American 
trade were placed on a better and more equitable foundati(<n, it 
would be well-nigh impossible even in years most unfavorable 
to us, to bring us in debt to the world. 

With such heavy purchases as we are compelled to niahe from 
Spanish America, it could hardly be expected that v/e should 
be able to adjust the entire account by exports. But the bal- 
ance against us of one hundred and twenty millions in gold 
coin is far too large and is in time of stringency a standing 
menace of financial disaster. It should not be forgotten that 
every million dollars' worth of products or fabrics tliat we sell in 
Spanish America is a million dollars in gold saved to our own 
country. The innnediate profit is to the producer and the 
exporter, but the entire country realizes a gain in the ease and 
affluence of the money market which is insured by keeping our 
gold at home. 

It is only claimed for the Peace Congress, designed under the 
administration of President Garfield, that it was an important 
and impressive step on the part of the United States towards 
closer relationship with our continental neighbors. The present 
tendency in those countries is towards Europe, and it is a 
lamentable fact that their pco[)le are not so near to us in feeling 
as they were sixty years ago when they threw off the yoke of 
Spanish tyranny. We were then a weak republic of but ten 
millions, but we did not hesitate to recognize the independenco 
of the new Governments, even at the. risk of a war witli Spain. 
Our foreign policy at that time was especially designed to ex- 
tend our inlluence in the Western Hemisphere, and the states- 
men of that era — the era of l)e Witt Clinton and the younger 
Adams, of Clay and Crawford, of Webster and Calhoun, of 
Van Buren and Benton, of Jackson and Edward Livingston 
— were always courageous in the inspiring measures which they 
advocated for the exi^ansion of our commercial dominion. 

Threescore 3'ears have passed. The power of the Republic 
in many directions has grown beyond all anticipation, but we 
have relatively lost ground in some great fields of enterprise. 
We have added thousands of miles to our ocean front, but our 
foreign commerce is relatively less, and from ardent friendship 



FOREIGN rOLICY OF GARFIELD ADMINISTRATION. 419 

with Spanish Aineiica wc liavc drifted into indifference if not 
into cokhiess. It is but one step further to reach a conchtion 
of positive unfriendliness, wliich may end in what wouhl be 
equivak^it to a connnercial alhance against us. Ah'eady one of 
the most dangerous of movements — that of a European guar- 
antee and guardianship of the Interoccanic canal — is suggested 
and urged u})on tlie foreign Powers by representatives of 
a South-American country. If these tendencies are to be 
averted, if Spanish-American friendship is to bo regained, if the 
connnercial empire that legitimately belongs to us is to be ours, 
we must not lie idle and witness its transfer to others. If we 
would reconquer it, a great first step is to be taken. It is the 
first step that costs. It is also the first step that counts. Can 
a wiser step be snggested than the Peace Congress of the two 
Americas, that was devised under Garlield and had the weight 
of his great name ? 

In no event could harm have resulted from the assembling of 
the Peace Congress. Failure was next to impossible. Success 
might be regarded as certain. The subject to bo discussed was 
Peace, and the measures by Avliich it can be }iermanently pre- 
served in North and South America. The labors of the Con- 
gress would probably ]iave ended in a well-digested system of 
arbitration, under which all future troubles between American 
States could be promptly and satisfactorily adjusted. Such 
a consumnmtion would have been worth a great struggle and a 
great sacrifice. It could liave been reached without struggle 
and vvould have involved no sacrifice. It was within our grasp. 
It was ours for the asking. It Vv'ould liave been a signal victory 
■of philanthropy over the selfishness of human ambition ; a com- 
plete triumph of Christian principles as ap])licd to the afiairs of 
nations. It would have reOected enduring honor on our own 
country and vv'ould have imparted a new s])irit and a new 
brotherhood to all America. Nor would its influence beyond 
the sea have been small. The examj)le of seventeen inde])end- 
ent nations solemnly agreeing to abolish the arbitrament of the 
sword, and to settle every dispute by peaceful adjudication, 
would have exerted an influence to the utmost confines of 
civilization, and upon generations of men yet to come. 



420 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



MR. BLAINE'S LETTER ACCEPTING THE REPUB- 
LICAN NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 

1884. 

Augusta, Me., July 15, 1884. 
The Honorable John B. Henderson and others of the Committee, etc. 

Gentlemen, — In accepting the nomination for the Presi- 
dency tendered me by the Republican National Convention, I 
beg to express a deep sense of the honor which is conferred 
and of the duty which is imposed. I venture to accompany 
the acceptance with some observations upon the questions 
involved in the contest — questions whose settlement may 
aifect the future of the Nation favorably or unfavorably for a 
long series of years. 

In enumerating the issues upon which the Republican party 
appeals for popular support, the Convention has been singu- 
larly explicit and felicitous. It has properly given the leading 
position to the industrial interests of the country as affected 
by the tariff on imports. On that question the two political 
parties are radically in conflict. Almost the first act of the 
Republicans, when they came into power in 1861, was the 
establishment of the principle of Protection to American labor 
and to American capital. This principle the Republican party 
has ever since steadily maintained, while on the other hand the 
Democratic party in Congress has for fifty years persistently 
warred upon it. Twice within that period our opponents have 
destroyed tariffs arranged for Protection, and since the close 
of the civil war, whenever they have controlled the House of 
Representatives, hostile legislation has been attempted — never 
more conspicuously than in their principal measure at the late 
session of Congress. 



MR. BLAINE ACCEPTS THE NOMINATION IN 1884. 421 

Revenue laws are in their very nature subject to frequent 
revision in order that they may be adapted to changes and 
modifications of trade. The Republican party is not contend- 
ing for the permanency of any particular statute. The issue 
between the two parties does not have reference to a specific 
law. It is far broader and far deeper : it mvolves a principle 
of wide application and beneficent influence against a theory 
which we believe to be unsound in conception and inevitably 
hurtful in practice. In the many tariff revisions which have 
been necessary for the past twenty-three years, or which may 
hereafter become necessary, the Republican party has main- 
tained and will maintain the policy of Protection to American 
industry, while our opponents insist upon a revision, which 
practically destroys that policy. The issue is thus distinct, 
well defined, and unavoidable. The pending election may de- 
termine the fate of Protection for a generation. The over- 
throw of the policy means a large and permanent reduction in 
the wages of the American laborer, besides involving the loss 
of vast amounts of American capital invested in manufacturing 
•enterprises. The value of our present revenue system to the 
People is not a matter of theory, and I shall submit no argu- 
ment to sustain it. I only invite attention to certain facts of 
■official record which seem to constitute a demonstration. 

In the census of 1850 an effort was made, for the first time 
in our history, to obtain a valuation of all the property in the 
United States. The attempt was in large degree unsuccessful. 
Partly from lack of time, partly from prejudice among many 
who thought the inquiries foreshadowed a ne^v scheme of taxa- 
tion, the returns were incomplete and unsatisfactory. Little 
more was done than to consolidate the local valuation used 
in the States for purposes of assessment, and that, as is well 
known, differs widely from a complete exhibit of all the property. 

In the census of 1860, however, the work was done with 
o-reat thoroughness — the distinction between " assessed " value 
and " true " value being carefully observed. The grand result 
was that the '' true value " of all the property in the States and 
territories (excluding slaves) amounted to fourteen thousand 
millions of dollars ($14,000,000,000.) This aggregate was the 
net result of the labor and the savings of all the people within 



422 rOLITICAL DISCUSSIOXS. 

the area of the United States from the time the first British 
colonist landed in 1G07 down to the year 18G0. It represented 
the fruit of the toil of two hundred and fifty years. 

After 18G0 the business of the country waa encouraged and 
develoi)cd by a Protective Tariff. At the end of twenty 
years the total projjcrty of the United States, as returned by 
the census of 1880, amounted to the enormous aggregate of 
forty-four thousand millions of dollars (■l!<44,000,000,000.) This 
great result Avas attained, notwithstanding the fact that count- 
less millions had in the interval been wasted in the progress. 
of a bloody war. It thns appears that while our population 
between 18G0 and 1880 increased sixty per cent, the aggregate 
pr()i)erty of the country increased two hundred and fourteen 
per cent — showing a largely enhanced wealth j^er capita among 
the people. Thirty thousand millions of dollars (■'S^30,000,000,- 
000) had been added during these twenty years to the perma- 
nent wealth of the nation — ?5;1, 500,000,000 per annum. 

These results are regarded by the older nations of the world 
as phenomenal. That our country should surmoiuit the peril 
and the cost of a gigantic war and for an entire period of 
twenty years make an average gain to its wealth of one hun- 
dred and twenty-five million dollars per month surpasses the 
experience of all other nations, ancient or modern. Even the 
opponents of the present Revenue system do not pretend that 
in the whole history of civilization any parallel can be found 
to the material progress of the United States, since the acces- 
sion of the Republican party to power. 

The period which has elapsed since 1860 has not only 
been one of material prosperity, but at no time in tlie his- 
tory of the United States has there been such progress in 
the moral and philanthropic field. Religious and charitable 
institutions, schools, seminaries, and colleges, have been founded 
and endowed far more liberally than at any previous time 
in our history. Greater and more varied relief has been 
extended to human suffering and the entire progress of the 
country in wealth has been accompanied and dignified by a 
br(;adening and uplifting of our character as a People. 

Onr opponents find fault that our revenue system produces- 
a surplus ; but they should not forget that the law lias given a 



MR. BLATXE ACCEPTS THE NOMIXATIOX IX ISSi. 423 

Specific piir])osc to wliich llic wliolc of llio surplus is profitably 
and honorably applied — the reduction of the public debt and 
the c:)nsc(]uent relief of the burden of taxation. No dollar has 
been wasted, and the only extravagance with winch tlie party 
stands charged is the generous pensioning of soldiers, sailors, 
and their families — an extravagance which embodies the high- 
est form of justice in the recognition and payment of a sacred 
debt. When reduction of taxation is to be made, tiie Ilcpub- 
lican party can be trusted to accomplish it in such form as will 
most effectively aid the industries of the nation. 

A frequent accusation by our opponents is tiiat tlic foreign 
commerce of the country has steadily decayed inider the inlhi- 
ence of the Protective tariff. In this way they seek to array 
the importing interest against the Republican party. It is a 
common and yet radical error to confound the commerce of tlie 
country Avitii its carrying-trade — an error often connnitted in- 
nocently and sometimes designedly — but an error so gross that 
it does not distinguish between the ship and the cargo. For- 
eign commerce represents the exports and imports of a covnitry 
regardless of the nationality of the vessel that may carry the 
commodities of exchange. Our carrying-trade has from obvious 
causes suffered many discouragements since 1860, but our for- 
eign commerce has in the same period steadily and [)rodigiously 
increased — increased indeed at a rate and to an amount which 
absolutely dwarf all previous developments of our trade beyond 
the sea. From 1860 to the present time the foreign commerce 
of the United States (divided with approxinnite equality be- 
tween exports and imports) reached a grand total of twenty-four 
thousand millions of dollars (§24,000,000,000). The balance 
in this astounding aggregate of exchanges inclined in our 
favor, but it would have been much larger if our trade with 
the countries of America, elsewhere referred to, had been more 
wisely adjusted. 

It is difficult even to appreciate the magnitude of our export 
trade since 1860 and we can gain a correct conception of it only 
by comparison with preceding results in the same field. The 
total exports from tlie United States from the Declaration of 
Independence in 177G down to the day of Lincoln's election in 



424 rOLITTCAL DISCUSSTOXS. 

1860, added to all that had previously l)cen exported from the 
American Colonies from their original settlement, amounted to 
less than nine thousand millions of dollars (§>9,000,000,000), 
On the other liand our exports from 1860 to the close of the 
last fiscal year exceeded twelve thousand millions of dollars 
(112,000,000,000) — the whole of it being the product of Ameri- 
can labor. Evidently a Protective tariff has not injured our 
export trade when under its influence we exported in twenty- 
four years thirty-three per cent more than the total amount that 
had been exported in the entire previous history of American 
commerce. All the details, when analyzed, correspond with this 
amazing result. The commercial cities of the Union never had 
such growth as they have enjoyed since 1860. Our chief empo- 
rium, the city of New York, with its dependencies, has within 
that period doubled her population and increased her wealth 
fivefold. During the same period the imports and exports 
wliich have entered and left her harbor are more than double 
in bulk and value the whole amount exported by her between 
the settlement of the first Dutch colony on the island of Man- 
hattan and the outbreak of the civil war in 1860. 

The agricultural interest is by far the largest in the Nation, 
and in every adjustment of Revenue Laws is entitled to the first 
consideration. Any policy hostile to the fullest development of 
agriculture in the United States must be abandoned. Realizing 
this fact the opponents of the present system of Revenue have 
labored very earnestly to persuade the farmers of the United 
States that they are robbed by a Protective Tariff, and the 
effort is thus made to consolidate their influence in favor of 
Free Trade. But happily the farmers of America are intelli- 
gent and cannot be misled by sopliistry when conclusive facts 
are before them. They see plainly that during the past twenty- 
four years, wealth has not been acquired in one section or by 
one interest at the expense of another section or another inter- 
est. They see that the agricultural States have made even 
more rapid j)rogress than the manufacturing States. 

The farmers see that in 1860 Massachusetts and Illinois had 
about the same wealth — between eight and nine hundred mil- 
lion dollars each — and that in 1880 Massachusetts had advanced 



UR. BLAIXE ACCEPTS THE NOMINATION IN 1884. 425 

to twenty-six hundred millions, while Illinois had advanced to 
thirty-two hundred millions. They see that New Jersey and 
Iowa were in 1860 just equal in population and that in twenty 
years the wealth of New Jersey was increased by the sum of 
eight hundred and fifty millions of dollars, while the wealth 
of Iowa was increased by the sum of fifteen hundred millions. 
They see that the nine leading agricultural States of the West 
have grown so rapidly in prosperity that the aggregate addition 
to their wealth since 1860 is nearly as great as the wealth of 
the entire country in that year. They see that the South, 
which is mainly agricultural, has shared in the general pros- 
perity and that having recovered from the loss and devastation 
of war, has gained so rapidly that its total wealth is at least 
double that which it possessed in 1860, exclusive of slaves. 

In these extraordinary developments the farmers see the help- 
ful impulse of a home market, and they see that the financial 
and revenue system, enacted since the Republican party came 
into power, has established and constantly expanded the home 
market. The}' see that even in the case of wheat, which is our 
chief cereal export, they have sold, in the average of the years 
since the close of the war, three bushels at home to one they 
have sold abroad, and that in the case of corn, the oidy other 
cereal which we export to any extent, one hundred bushels have 
been used at home to three and a half bushels exported. In 
some years the disparity has been so great that for every peck 
of corn exported one hundred bushels have been consumed in 
the home market. The farmers see that in the increasing com- 
petition from the grain-fields of Russia and from the distant 
plains of India, the growth of the home market becomes daily 
of greater concern to them and that the impairment of that 
market would depreciate the value of every acre of tillable land 
in the Union. 

Such facts as these touching the growth and consumption of 
cereals at home give us some slight conception of the vastness 
of the internal commerce of the United States. They suggest 
also that, in addition to the advantages which the American 
people enjoy from protection against foreign competition, they 
enjoy the advantages of absolute free trade over a larger area 



426 rOLlTICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

and with a greater population than any other nation. The in- 
ternal commerce of onr thirt3'-cig']it States and nine Territories 
is carried on without let or hindrance, without tax, detention or 
Governmental interference of any hind whatever. It spreads- 
freely over an area of three and a half millions of square miles 
— almost equal in extent to the wliolc continent of Europe- 
Its profits are enjoyed to-day b}^ fifty-six millions of American 
freemen, and from this enjoyment no mono[)oly is created. 
According- to Alexander Hamilton, when he discussed the same 
subject in 1790, ''the internal competition which takes place 
does away wdth every thing like monopoly, and by degrees re- 
duces the prices of articles to the minimum of a reasonable 
profit on the capital employed." It is impossible to point to a 
single monopoly that has been created or fostered by tlio In- 
dustrial System which is ui^held by the Republican party. 

Conq^arcd with our foreign commerce these domestic ex- 
changes arc inconceivably great in amount — requiring merely 
for one instrumentality as large a mileage of railway as exists 
to-day in all the other nations of the world. These internal 
exchanges are estimated by the Statistical Bureau of the 
Treasury Department to be annually twenty times as great 
in amount as our foreign commerce. It is into this field of 
home trade — at once the creation and the heritage of the 
American people — that foreign nations are striving to enter. 
It is into this field that the opponents of our present revenue 
system Avould freely admit the countries of Europe — countries 
in whose internal trade we could not reciprocally share ; coun- 
tries to which we should be surrendering every advantage of 
traffic ; from which w^e should be gaining nothing in return. 

A policy that would abandon this field of home trade must 
prove disastrous to the mechanics and workingmen of the United 
States. Wages are unjustly reduced when an industrious man 
is not able by his earnings to live in comfort, educate his 
children, and save asufiiciont amount for the necessities of age. 
The reduction of wages inevitably consequent iq)on throwing 
our home market open to the world, would deprive the working- 
men of the United States of the power to do this. It would 
prove a great calamity to our country. It would produce a 



MR. BLAINE ACCEPTS THE NOMINATION IN 1884. 427 

conflict between the poor and the rich, and in the sorrowful 
degradation of hibor wouhl phmt the seeds of public danger. 

The Kepublican party has steadily aimed to maintain just 
relations between Labor and Capital — guarding with care tli^ 
rights of each. A conflict between the two lifts always led in 
the past and will always lead in the future to the injury of both. 
Labor is indispensable to the creation and profitable use of 
capital, and capital increases the efficiency and value of labor. 
Whoever arrays the one against the other is an enemy of both. 
That polic}' is wisest and best which harmonizes the two on the 
basis of absolute justice. The Kepublican part}^ has protected 
the free labor of America so that its compensation is larger than 
is 'realized in any other country. It lias guarded our people 
against the unfair competition of contract labor from China and 
may be called upon to prohibit the growth of a similar evil from 
Europe. It is obviously unfair to permit capitalists to make 
contracts for cheap labor in foreign countries to the hurt and 
disparagement of the labor of American citizens. Such a policy 
(like that which would leave the time and other conditions of 
home labor exclusively in the control of the employer) is in- 
jurious to all parties — not the least so to the unhappy [)ersons 
who are made the subjects of the contract. The institutions of 
the United States rest upon the intelligence and virtue of all 
the people. Suffrage is made universal as a just weapon of 
self-protection to ever}' citizen. It is not the interest of the 
Republic that au}^ economic system should be adopted which 
involves the reduction of wages to the hard standard prevailing 
elsewhere. The Republican party aims to elevate and dignify 
labor — not to degrade it. 

As a substitute for the industrial system which under Re- 
publican administrations has developed a prosperity so extraor- 
dinary, our opponents offer a policy which is but a series of 
experiments upon our system of revenue — a polic}' whose end 
must be harm to our manufactures and greater harm to our 
labor. Experiment in the industrial and financial system is the 
country's greatest dread, as stability is its greatest Ijoon. Even 
the uncertainty resulting from the recent tariff agitation in 
Congress has hurtfully affected the business of the entire coun- 
try. Who can measure the injury to our shops and our homes, 



428 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

to our farms and our commerce, if the uncertainty of perpetual 
tariff agitation is to be inflicted upon the country? 

Our Foreign relations favor our domestic development. We 
are at peace with the world — at peace upon a sound basis with 
no unsettled questions of sufficient magnitude to embarrass or 
distract us. Happily removed by our geographical position 
from participation or interest in those questions of dynasty or 
boundary which so frequently disturb the peace of Europe, we 
are left to cultivate friendly relations with all, and are free 
from possible entanglements in the quarrels of any. The 
United States has no cause and no desire to engage in conflict 
with any Power on earth, and we may rest in assured confi- 
dence that no Power desires to attack the United States. 

With the nations of the Western Hemisphere we should cul- 
tivate closer relations and for our common prosperity and ad- 
vancement we should invite them all to join with us in an 
agreement that, for the future, all international troubles in 
North or South America shall be adjusted by impartial arbi- 
tration and not by arms. This project was part of the fixed 
policy of President Garfield's Administration and it should in 
my judgment be revived. Its accomplishment on this conti- 
nent would favorably affect the nations beyond the sea, and 
thus powerfully contribute at no distant day to the universal 
acceptance of the philanthropic and Christian principle of arbi- 
tration. The effect even of suggesting it to the Spanish- 
American States has been most happy and has increased the 
confidence of those people in our friendly disposition. It fell 
to my lot as Secretary of State in June, 1881, to quiet appre- 
hension in the Republic of Mexico, by giving the assurance in 
an official dispatch that " there is not the faintest desire in the 
United States for territorial extension south of the Rio 
Grande. The boundaries of the two Republics have been 
established in conformity with the best jurisdictional interests 
of both. The line of demarcation is not merely conventional. 
It is more ; it separates a Spanish-American people from a 
Saxon-American people ; it divides one great nation from 
another with distinct and natural finality." 

We seek the conquests of peace ; we desire to extend our 



MR. BLAINE ACCEPTS THE NOMINATION IN 1884. 42^ 

commerce, and in an especial degree with our friends and 
neighbors on this continent. We have not improved our rela- 
tions with Spanish America as wisely and as persistently as we 
might have done. For more than a generation the sympathy 
of those countries has been allowed to drift away from us. 
We should now make every effort to gain their friendship. 
Our 'trade with them is already large. During the last year 
our exchanges in the Western Hemisphere amounted to three 
hundred and fifty millions of dollars — nearly one-fourth of 
our entire foreign commerce. To those who may be disposed 
to underrate the value of our trade with the countries of North 
and South America, it may be well to state that their popula- 
tion is nearly or quite fifty millions — and that, in proportion 
to aggregate numbers, we import nearly double as much from 
them as w^e do from Europe. But the result of the Spanish 
American trade is in a high degree unsatisfactory. The im- 
ports during the past year exceeded two hundred and twenty- 
five millions, while the exports were less than one hundred and 
twenty-five millions — showing a balance against us of more 
than one hundred millions of dollars. But the money does not 
go to Spanish America. We send large sums to Europe in coin 
or its equivalent to pay European manufacturers for the goods 
which they send to Spanish Amierica. We are but paymasters 
for this enormous amount annually to European factors. 

Cannot this condition of trade in great part be changed? 
Cannot the market for our products be greatly enlarged ? We 
have made a beginning in our effort to improve our trade rela- 
tions with Mexico, and we should not be content until similar 
and mutually advantageous ' arrangements have been succes- 
sively made with every nation of North and South America. 
While tlie great powers of Europe are steadily enlarging their 
colonial domination in Asia and Africa it is the especial prov- 
ince of this country to improve and expand its trade with the 
nations of America. No field promises so much ; no field lias 
been cultivated so little. Our foreign policy should be an 
American policy in its broadest and most comprehensive sense 
— a policy of peace, of friendship, of commercial enlargement. 
The name of American, which belongs to us in our National 
capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism. Citi- 



430 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

zenship of the Republic must be the panoply and safeguard of 
him who wears it. The American citizen, rich or poor, native 
or naturalized, white or colored, must everywhere walk secure 
in his personal and civil rights. The Republic should never 
accejot a lesser duty, it can never assume a nobler one, than 
the protection of the humblest man who owes it loyalty — pro- 
tection at home, and protection which shall follow him abroad, 
into whatever land he may go upon a lawful errand. 

I recognize, not without regret, the necessity for speaking of 
two sections of our common country. But tlie regret dimin- 
ishes when I see that the elements which separated tliem are 
fast disappearing. Prejudices have yielded and are yielding, 
while a growing cordiality warms the Southern and the North- 
ern heart alike. Can any one doubt that between the sections 
confidence and esteem are to-day more marked than at any 
period in the sixty years preceding the election of President 
Lincoln ? This is the result in part of time and in j)art of 
Republican principles applied under the favorable conditions 
of uniformity. It would be a great calamity to change these 
influences under which Southern Commonwealths are learning 
to vindicate civil rights, and adapting themselves to the condi- 
tions of political tran(]uillity and industrial progress. If there 
be occasional outbreaks in the South against this peaceful 
progress, the public opinion of the country regards them as 
exceptional and hopefully trusts that each will prove the 
last. 

Any effort to unite the Soutliern States upon issues that grow 
out of the memories of the war, will summon the Northern 
States to combine in the assertion of that nationalit}^ which 
was their inspiration in the civil struggle. Thus great ener- 
gies which should be united in a common industrial deve]o[)- 
msnt will be wasted in hurtful strife. The Democratic [oarty 
shows itself a foe to Southern prosperity by always invoking 
and urging Southern political consolidation. Such a jiolicy 
quenches the rising instinct of patriotism in the heart of tlie 
Southern youth; it revives and stimulates prejudice; it sub- 
stitutes the spirit of barbaric vengeance for the love of peace, 
progress, and harmony. 



MR. BLAINE ACCEPTS THE NOMTXATIOX IN 1884. 431 

The general character of the civil service of the United 
States under all Administrations of the Government has been 
honorable. In tlic one supreme test — the collection and dis- 
bursement of revenue — the record of fidelity has never been 
•fiurpassed in any nation. With the almost fabulous sums which 
were received and paid during the late war, scrupulous integ- 
rity was the prevailing rule. Indeed, throughout tliat trying 
period, it can be said to the honor of the American name, that 
unfaithfulness and dishonesty among civil officers were as rare 
as misconduct and cowardict on the field of battle. 

The growth of the country has continually and necessarily 
enlarged the civil service, until now it includes a great body of 
officers. Rules and methods of a^jpointment Vv-luch prevailed 
when the number was smaller have been found insufficient and 
impracticable, and earnest efforts have been made to separate 
the mass of ministerial officers from partisan iuflucnee and 
personal control. Impartiality in the mode of appointment to 
be based on qualification, and security of tenure to be based on 
faithful discharge of duty, are the two ends to be accomi)lished. 
The public business will be aided by separating the Legislative 
branch of the Government from all control of appointments 
and the Executive will be relieved by subjecting appointments 
to fixed rules and thus removing them from the caprice of 
favoritism. But there should be rigid observance of the law 
which, in all cases of equal competency, gives the preference to 
the soldiers who risked their lives in defense of the Union. 

I entered Congress in 1SG3, and in a somewhat prolonged 
service I never found it expedient to request or recommend the 
removal of a civil officer except in four instances, and then for 
non-political reasons which were instantly conclusive with the 
appointing power. The officers in the district, appointed by 
Mr. Lincoln in 1861 upon the recommendation of my predeces- 
sor, served, as a rule, until death or resignation. I adojjted at 
the beginning of my service the test of competitive examination 
for appointments to West Point and maintained it so long as I 
had the right by law to nominate a cadet. In the case of many 
officers I found tliat the present law which arbitrarily limits the 
terra of the commission offered a constant temptation to changes 
for mere political reasons. I liave publicly expressed the belief 



432 rOLlTICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

that the essential modification of that law would be in many 
respects advantageous. 

My observation in the Dei)artment of State confirmed tlie 
conclusions of my Legislative experience, and impressed me with 
the conviction that the rule of impartial appointment might 
with advantage be carried beyond any existing provision of the 
Civil Service Law. It should be applied to appointments in 
the consular service. Consuls should be commercial sentinels 
— encircling the globe with watchfulness for their country's 
interests. Their intelligence and competency become, there- 
fore, matters of great public concern. No man should be ap- 
pointed to an American consulate who is not well instructed 
in the history and resources of his own covmtry, and in the 
requirements and language of commerce in the country to 
which he is sent. The same rule should be applied even more 
rigidly to Secretaries of Legation in our Diplomatic service. 
The people have the right to the most efficient agents in the 
discharge of public business and the appointing power should 
regard this as the prior and ulterior consideration. 

Religious liberty is the right of every citizen of the Repub- 
lic. Congress is forbidden by the Constitution to make any 
law " respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the 
free exercise thereof." For a century, under this guarantee, 
Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, have worshiped God 
according to the dictates of conscience. But religious liberty 
must not be perverted to the justification of offenses ngainst the 
law. A religious sect, strongly intrenched in one of the Terri- 
tories of the Union, and spreading into four other Territories, 
claims the right to destroy the safeguard and muniment of social 
order, and to practice as a religious privilege that which is a 
crime punished with severe penalty in every State of the Union. 
The sacred unity of the family must be preserved as the foun- 
dation of all civil government, as the source of orderly adminis- 
tration, as the surest guarantee of moral purity. 

The claim of the Mormons that they are divinely authorized 
to practice polygamy should no more be admitted than the claim 
of certain heathen tribes, if they should come among us, to con- 
tinue the rite of human sacrifice. The law does not interfere 



MR. BLAINE ACCEPTS THE NOMINATION IN 1884. 433 

with what a man believes. It takes cognizance only of what he 
does. As citizens, the Mormons are entitled to the same civil 
rights as others and to these they must be confined. Polygamy 
ought never to receive National toleration by the admission 
of a community that uj^holds it, as a State in the Union. The 
Mormons must learn, as others have learned, that the liberty of 
the individual ceases where the rights of society begin. 

The people of the United States, though often urged and 
tempted, have never seriously contemplated the recognition of 
any other money than gold and silver — and currency directly 
convertible into them. They have not done so, they will not 
do so, under any necessity less pressing than that of desperate 
war. The one special requisite for the completion of our 
monetary system is the fixing of the relative values of silver 
and gold. The large use of silver as the money of account 
among Asiatic nations, taken in connection with the increasing- 
commerce of the world, gives the weightiest reasons for an 
international agreement in the premises. Our Government 
should not cease to urge this measure until a common stand- 
ard of value shall be established — a standard that shall enable 
the United States to use the silver from its mines as an aux- 
iliary to gold in settling the balances of Commercial ex- 
change. 

The strength of the Republic is increased by the multiplica- 
tion of land-holders. Our laws should look to the judicious 
encouragement of actual settlers on the public domain, which 
should henceforth be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of 
those seeking homes. The tendency to consolidate large tracts 
of land in the ownership of individuals or corporations should 
be discouraged. One hundred thousand acres of land owned by 
one man is far less profitable to the Nation than when its owner- 
ship is divided among one thousand men. The evil of permit- 
ting large tracts of the National domain to be controlled by the 
few against the many is enhanced when the persons controlling 
it are aliens. It is but fair that the public land should be dis- 
posed of only to actual settlers and to those who are citizens 
of the Republic, or willing to become so. 



434 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Among our National interests one languishes — the foreign 
carrying-trade. It was very seriously crippled in our civil war, 
and another blow was given to it in the general substitution of 
steam for sail in ocean traffic. With a frontage on the two 
great oceans, with a freightage larger than that of any other 
nation, we have every inducement to restore our navigation. 
Yet the Government has hitherto refused its help. A small 
share of the encouragement given to railways and to manufac- 
tures, and a small share of the capital and the zeal given by our 
citizens to those enterprises, would have carried our ships to 
every sea. A law just enacted removes some of the burdens 
upon our navigation and inspires hope that this great interest 
may at last receive its due share of attention. All efforts in 
this direction should receive encouragement. 

This survey of our condition as a Nation reminds us that 
material prosperity is but a mockery if it does not tend to pre- 
serve the liberty of the people. A free ballot is the safeguard 
of Republican institutions, without which National welfare is 
not assured. A popular election, honestly conducted, embodies 
the very majesty of true government. Ten millions of voters 
desire to take part in the pending contest. The safety of the 
Republic rests upon the integrity of the ballot, upon the security 
of suffrage to the citizen. To deposit a fraudulent vote is no 
worse a crime against Constitutional liberty than to obstruct 
the deposit of an honest vote. He who corrupts suffrage strikes 
tit the very root of free government. He is the arch-enemy of 
the Republic. He forgets that in trampling upon the rights of 
others he fatally imperils his own rights. " It is a good land 
which the Lord our God doth give us," but we can maintain 
our heritage only by guarding with vigilance the source of 
popular power. 

I am Avith great respect. 

Your obedient servant, 

JAMES G. BLAINE. 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 435 



SPEECHES BEFORE THE PEOPLE DURING THE 
PRESIDENTIAL CANVASS OF 1884. 



[During the campaign of 1884 Mr. Blaine made a tour tlirough several States 
in the course of wh.ch — lasting in all some six weelcs — he spoke more than 
four hundred times to assemblies of the people. The speeches were necessarily 
brief. A small selection of them are here given.] 



[At the Worcester County, Massachusetts, Agricultural Fair, Sept. 18, 1884.] 

Ladies and Gentleisien, — I am sure that, under this rich 
autumn sun and in this prosperous State, you will expect from 
me to-day nothing but words of congratulation. If there be 
any one spot within the limits of the United States which may 
challenge all others in wealth, contentment, and general happi- 
ness, it must be Worcester, in the State of Massachusetts. 
We are accustomed, without looking closely at figures, to think 
of some of the rich sections of Europe as far more populous 
than any portion of this country ; but in the United Kingdom 
of Great Britain and Ireland outside the counties of Middlesex 
and Surry there is not so dense a population as inhabits Massa- 
chusetts from this point to the sea ; there is not in the crowded 
Kingdom of Belgium, not even in that hive of industry — 
Holland — so dense a population as you on this ground repre- 
sent to-day. When we compare the comfort and thrift of tlie 
entire people, there is not, perhaps, on this circling globe a 
community with which Worcester County cannot stand tlie 
test. In the West, on those rich lands which "-laugh a crop when 
tickled with a hoe," in that " boundless contiguity " of space in 
which the agricultural district stretches from the crest of the 
Alleghenies to the Great Plains, it will be a surprise to them, 
if it is not to you, that this county of Worcester, out of more 



436 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

than seventeen liimdred counties that make up the United 
States, is the fifteenth in the Union in the value of its agricul- 
tural products ; and what is even more surprising is the fact 
that, standing in this high rank in agricultural industry and 
agricultural product, it stands still higher in mechanical indus- 
try and in manufactures. In that list it stands tenth in the 
United States. So that when you come to estimate the $3,500,- 
000,000 product of agriculture and the $6,000,000,000 product 
of manufactures in a single year in the United States, you can 
see what must be the magnificent prosperity of this county that 
enables it to stand fifteenth in the one list and tenth in the 
other. Gentlemen, this county has been long noted. It is 
the county best known in the State — and so widely known 
throughout the Union that if any county in this country were 
to be presented as the exemplar, the one illustration of what 
free industry, and free schools, and free suffrage could do, 
there would be a unanimous voice in favor of presenting the 
county of Worcester as that exemplar. We in Maine are some- 
times a little jealous of you in Massachusetts — perhaps it is 
only because of your superior prosperity ; but outside and be- 
yond that jealousy I am here to say on behalf of the State, 
which was formerly a part of the old Commonwealth, that for 
the county of Worcester, for the State of Massachusetts, no 
other feeling is entertained than that of respect and honor. 

[At Hamilton, O., on the 1st of October, 1884.] 

Citizens of Ohio, — It is now forty years since the question 
of a Protective tariff engaged the attention of the American peo- 
ple as profoundly as it does to-day. It was in the contest between 
Mr. Clay and Mr. Polk in 1844 that the great National debate 
on that question took place. The Protective tariff was defeated, 
not by the popular vote, but by the bad faith of the Democratic 
party which succeeded in the election ; and I beg to call your 
attention — the attention of a large manufacturing population 
— to the fact that the policy of protecting our industries 
has never been defeated in the United States by the popular 
vote. A contrary policy has been forced on the people at dif- 
ferent times through the bad faith of their representatives, but 
never, I repeat, by a popular vote, upon a deliberate appeal to 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 437 

the people in their primary capacity. It would therefore seem 
to be the duty of the people of the United States, if b}- a ma- 
jority they believe in the policy of Protection, to see to it that 
the party is sustained which can be trusted to uphold it. Yes, 
but, said a gentleman to me yesterday, " Protection does not 
always secure abundant prosperity ; there are a great many idle 
men now in the country." Grant it, gentlemen! There has 
never yet been a policy devised by the wisdom of man that will 
insure through all times and all seasons a continuous flow of 
prosperity. But the question is whether over a given series 
of years there has not been a larger degree of prosperity to the 
people under the policy of Protection than under the policy of 
Free Trade. The question is to be tested not by the experi- 
ence of a single year, but by the experience of a series of years. 
We have had a Protective tariff now for more than two decades, 
and I ask you whether there has ever been another period in 
which the United States has made such progress as during the 
last twenty years ? 

It is true I admit that now and then there will come a lull 
and a re-action in business. Adverse changes frequently come 
even under the laws of Nature. You are suffering from a pro- 
tracted drought in Ohio this year, but you do not on that 
account avow that you will have no more rains. You do not 
fear that seed-time and harvest will fail ! On the contrary, you 
are the more firmly persuaded that rain is the only element that 
will restore fertility to your soil, verdure to your fields, richness 
to your crops. So in this little slough, this temporary dullness 
in the business in the country, the one great element that can 
be relied on to restore prosperity is the Protective tariff. The 
question is one which Ohio must in large part decide. On the 
fourteenth day of this month you will have an opportunity to 
tell the people of the United States whether you believe in 
the policy of Protection. If you do, you will secure not only 
its continuance, but its permanent triumph. If, on the other 
hand, you should falter and fall back, it might produce disaster 
elsewhere. The responsibility is upon you. Is your courage 
equal to your responsibility ? Is your confidence equal to your 
courage ? 



438 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

[At Grafton, West Virginia, on the (ith of October, 1884.1 

Citizens of West Virginia, — As tout distinguished 
Chainnaii has intimated, I am not a stranger to your State. I 
have known it personally I might say all my life, and this section 
of it I have known well. I was born and reared on the banks of 
yonder river a few miles below the point where it enters Penn- 
sylvania, and you do not need to be told by me that there has 
always been good-fellowship and unity of feeling among the 
inhabitants of the Monongahela Valley. But I have not seen 
in my journey to-day, I do not see around me and before me 
now the West Virginia which I knew in my boyhood. The 
West Virginia of forty years ago was comi^aratively a wilder- 
ness. The West Virginia of to-day is a prosj)erous industrial 
centre in the United States, with great lines of railways and 
great manufacturing establishments. West Virginia, as an in- 
dependent Commonwealth, began her existence during the civil 
war, and at that day the most liberal estimate of her total prop- 
erty, according to the enumeration of the United States census, 
did not exceed $100,000,000, In 1870 the census gave you an 
aggregate of $190,000,000, and in 1880 it showed that you 
possessed capitalized wealth to the amount of $350,000,000. 
From the close of the war to the year 1880, a period of only 
iifteen years. West Virginia had therefore gained in wealth the 
enormous sum of $250,000,000, You have fared pretty well, 
therefore, under Republican administration. 

Probably some political opponent does me the honor to listen 
to me, and I would ask him, as a candid man, what agency was 
it that nerved the arm of industry to smite the mountains and 
create this wealth in West Virginia ? It was the Protective tariff 
and a financial system that gave you good money and an abun- 
dant currency. Before the war you never had a bank-bill circu- 
lating in West Virginia that would pass current five hundred 
miles from home. You have not to-day a single piece of paper 
money circulating in West Virginia that is not good all around 
the globe ; not a bill that will not pass as readily in the mone}'^ 
markets of Europe as in Wheeling, Baltimore or New York. So 
that the man who works for wages knows, when Saturday night 
comes, that he is to be paid for his week's labor in good money. 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 439 

Under the Protective tariff your coal industries, and your 
iron industries, and the wealth of your forests have been 
brought out, and it is for you, voters of West Virginia, to say 
whether you wish this to continue or whether you want to try 
Free Trade. I make bold to say, with all respect, that there is 
not a Democratic statesman on the stump in West Virginia, 
conspicuous enough to be known to the Nation — I speak only 
of those I know — who advocates a Protective tariff; not one. 
I go further ; I do not know a Democratic statesman who does 
not hold that a tariff for Protection is unconstitutional, and, 
therefore, as honest men they are bound to oppose it. The 
Morrison Tariff Bill would have struck at the interests of West 
Virginia in many vital respects, and it is an amazing fact that 
the representatives in Congress from West Virginia voted for 
that bill. There is a good old adage which I beg to recall to 
your minds, that God helps those who help themselves, and if 
West Virginia is not willing to sustain a Protective tariff by 
her vote and her influence she must not expect it to be sus- 
tained for her by others. If she wants the benefit of a Protec- 
tive tariff she must give to a Protective tariff the benefit of her 
support. If she is not willing to do this she does not deserve 
the prosperity which a Protective tariff has brought and is still 
bringing to her. 

I am glad that I am addressing a Southern audience ; I am 
glad to exchange view^s with a community that were slave- 
holders — a community made up of those who were masters and 
those who were slaves. But I am addressing a slave State no 
longer. I am appealing to the new South. I am appealing to 
West Virginia not to vote upon a tradition or a prejudice ; not 
to keep her eyes to the rear and to the past, but to look to the 
front and to the future ; and if I could be heard I would make 
the same appeal to other Southern States — to old Virginia, to 
North Carolina, to Georgia, to Alabama, to Tennessee, and to 
Louisiana. They are all interested in a Protective tariff, and 
the question is, which do they prefer, to gratify a prejudice or 
to promote general prosperity? West Virginia can lead the 
way : she can break this seemingly impregnable barrier of the 
solid South. Solid on what ? Solid on a prejudice ; solid on a 
tradition ; solid upon doctrines that separate the different por- 



440 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

tions of the Union. I invite you to join in a union not merely 
in form, but in fact: I invite you to take your part in the 
solution of the industrial and financial problems of the time. 
If West Virginia takes that course on the 14th of October she 
will do much to settle the controversies that now agitate the 
country. 

The repeal of the Protective tariff, as proposed by the terms 
of the Morrison Bill, would cost West Virginia a vast sum of 
money. Between 1870 and 1880 you gained in this State 
$160,000,000, between 1880 and 1890 you will gain much more, 
with a tariff for Protection ; but I ask any business man if he 
believes you can do it with Free Trade ? 

Here I close my words of counsel, leaving the action to you. 
I leave you, I trust, not as a community influenced by sectional 
feeling, but as a community broadly National. I leave you as 
a State allied on this side to Pennsylvania, and on that to 
Ohio, as much as you are on the other sides to Virginia and 
Kentucky. I leave you as a State that stands in the van of the 
new South, inviting the whole South to join in a great National 
movement which shall in fact and in feeling, as well as in form, 
make us a people with one union, one Constitution, one destiny. 

[At Lancaster, Ohio, Oct. 11, 1884.] 

My Friends, — I confess that in this place and at this time 
I hardly feel disjiosed to make any allusion to public affairs. 
The recollections that rush upon me as I stand here carry me 
back through many years, to .a time before the majority of 
those who now hear me were born. In 1841 I was a school- 
boy in this town, attending the school of Mr. William Lyons, 
a cultivated English gentleman — the younger brother of the 
then Lord Lyons, and uncle of the late British Minister at 
Washington. He taught the youth of this vicinity with great 
success, with thoroughness, and with refinement. I know not 
whether he be living, but if he is I beg to make my acknowl- 
edgments to him, if these words may reach him, for his effi- 
ciency and excellence as an instructor. As I look upon your 
faces I am carried back to those days, to Lancaster as it then 
was. In that row of dwellings on the opposite side of the 
street, in one of which I then lived and am now a guest, resided 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 44l 

at that time the three leading lawyers of Ohio — Thomas 
Ewing, Henry Stanbury, and Hocking Hunter. I vividly 
recall their persons and their peculiarities. 

A few months before there had come home from West Point 
a tall and very slender young man, straight as an arrow, with 
a sharp face and a full suit of red hair. His name was 
Sherman, and he had in his pocket an order to join the array in 
Florida. You have heard of him since. You have heard of 
him, and he will be heard of as long as the march through 
Georgia holds its place in history ; he will be heard of as long 
as lofty character and military genius are esteemed among 
men. . 

About the same time, from a country town to the south-west 
of this place, there was sent to West Point a sturdy, strong- 
headed youth who was also heard of in the war, and whose 
fame has since encircled the globe. His name is Ulysses S. 
Grant. 

In the adjoining county of Perry, twenty miles perhaps from 
this spot, there lived a short, stout boy, who has since become 
known to the world as Phil Sheridan. Combative, yet gentle 
in nature, he achieved a reputation not unlike that which Ney 
attained in the Napoleonic wars. So that Ohio was then pre- 
paring military leaders for great contingencies, for unforeseen 
crises. 

I remember another youth of this town — slender, tall, 
stately — who had just left school, when I came here from my 
home across the Pennsylvania line, and who had begun as a 
civil engineer on the Muskingum River improvements. You 
have since heard of him too. Ilis name is John Sherman. 

At that time this town seemed to my boyish vision to be the 
centre of the universe, and my idea was that the world was 
under deep obligation for being permitted to revolve around 
Lancaster. I recall those scenes with peculiar pleasure. I 
recall my early attachment and love for this town, and for the 
friends and the kindred that were in it — some of whom near 
to me in blood were here when Arthur St. Clair was Governor 
of the North-west Territory, and some of whom are here still. 
When I think of those days, and of the deep attachments I 
inherited and have since maintained, I feel more like dwelling 



442 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

upon old stories and old scenes, than talking about the political 
contests of to-day. 

But, my friends, these things are gone by for more than forty 
years, and a new generation of men meet here in a new era, 
under new responsibilities. We meet upon the eve of an impor- 
tant election, and the people of Ohio, as is their wont and as 
has been their fortune, are placed in the vanguard of the fight. 
I am satisfied that on Tuesday next j^ou will show, as you have 
shown in preceding Presidential years, that Ohio is fit to be 
intrusted with the responsibility of leadership in a National 
contest. I do not stop to argue any question: the time for 
argument has passed. I do not stop even to appeal to you; 
the appeal has been made. I stop only to remind you that if 
you do your duty on Tuesday next as becomes men of your 
lineage and your inheritance, the Republican administration of 
this Government will be continued ; the Protective tariff will be 
upheld ; the patriotism and the fruits of the civil struggle will 
be maintained, and the Government of the Union, preserved by 
the loyalty of the Union, will continue to be administered in 
loyalty to the Union. Good-night. 

[At Flint, Michigan, Oct. 16, 1884.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — I have received since I have been in 
this State, two or three letters from persons asking me to say 
in public whether I had ever been a member of the Know-Noth- 
ing party. In connection with these inquiries from persons in 
Michigan I have received several telegrams from the Pacific 
coast asking whether I was not a supporter of Mr. Fillmore 
when he ran in 1856 as the Native American candidate for the 
Presidency. Let me say, in full and explicit reply to these in- 
quiries by letter and telegraph, that I never was a member of 
the Know-Nothing order; that I never voted for a man who 
w\as nominated by it, either for a State or for a National office ; 
and that instead of supporting Mr. Fillmore in 1856, when I 
was a young man of twenty-six I had the honor to be a member 
of the National Republican Convention which nominated Gen- 
eral Fremont, and as the General is now on this platform, he 
will be able to bear testimony that, however inefficient my sup- 
port may have been, it was very earnest and very ardent. I 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 443 

was then the junior editor of the Kennebec Journal, and the 
paper was entirely devoted to General Fremont's advocacy, and 
aided in giving him the largest majority ever cast in Maine for 
a Presidential candidate of any party. The Know-Nothing 
order holds views in regard to immigration and naturalization 
from wliich I never hesitated to express dissent. 

But while I am on that subject, I wish to say that there 
are at least three wrongs in connection with European immigra- 
tion which, in my judgment, require correction. 

Firfit, I think that the habit which has grown up on the part 
of some European countries of sending their paupers to the 
United States ought not to be longer tolerated. I believe in 
the good old American system which requires that each town 
or each county shall take care of its own poor. If the laws of 
European countries tend to impoverish their working-people 
those countries ought to take care of them when reduced to 
want, instead of shipping them to us. 

Second, And still more objectionable is the practice of ship- 
ping their criminals to us, as has been done, criminals being in 
many cases released from punishment on condition that they 
shall come to the United States. I think that is a very grave 
offense against this country which should not be permitted but 
should on the contrary be resented and forbidden. 

Third, If a tariff for protection is designed to elevate the 
laboring-man of this country and secure him good wages — and 
if it is not for that it is not for any thing — then I think the 
custom which some men are trying to introduce of importing 
cheap contract labor from foreign countries to compete with 
home labor ought to be prohibited. It is a species of servitude, 
against the spirit of our laws, and injures all who are in any 
way connected with it. 

These are three evils which I think should be remedied. But, 
as to every honest immigrant seeking to better his condition, 
whether he come from the British Isles or from the great Ger- 
man Empire, from the sunny climes of the Latin nations, or 
from the brave Scandinavian races of the North, we bid him 
God-speed and give him hearty welcome and hospitalit}^ ; and, 
when he is admitted to citizenship, we assure him protection at 
home and abroad. Once among us and of us, his rights are 



444 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

equal before the law with those of the native-born citizen. No 
distinction can be tolerated among those who are clothed with 
the honor of American citizenship. 

[At Ann Arbor, to the students of Michigan University, Oct. 18, 1884.] 

During the war we used to hear much about the rebel yell. 
It was said to imply great vigor and determination, but it seems 
to me that the young men of Michigan University who do me 
the honor to appear here to-day could have terrified the whole 
army of Lee. But I am glad to witness it and hear it, for it 
implies the enthusiasm and strength of youth; and from the 
youth of the country the Republican party is constantly re- 
cruited. What we lose from desertion and disappointment and 
dissatisfaction on the part of the elders is far more than made 
up — yea, fourfold made up — by the young men of the country 
who are just coming into active life. I wish to leave with these 
young collegians a problem in relation to the leading industrial 
issue of the time — a problem which will confront them in their 
future careers — that is, to find out why so many college youths 
who are Free-Traders at twenty become Protectionists at forty ? 
I think the answer will be found in the fact that at forty they 
have taken degrees in the university of experience, which, after 
all, is much wider than the university of theory in which our 
college boys are taught. I was myself taught when I was in 
college the doctrine of Free Trade, but the United States stands 
as a perpetual and irrefutable argument and example of the 
value of Protection to Home industries in a new country. 

I am glad to meet you — not merely as those interested in a 
political campaign, but as 3^oung men who are the pride and 
hope of the country. In dealing with the problems of the 
future in this marvelous experiment of a people governing 
themselves by free and universal suffrage, nothing can avail 
except an educated and constantly corrected public opinion. 
I wish to impress upon every man who has the advantage of a 
collegiate education that he is every day more and more placed 
in debt to his country, and that in proportion as he progresses 
in knowledge and wisdom, in that proportion will he be ex- 
pected to pay back in patriotic labor the country which has 
nurtured him. I congratulate you on being born to such 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 445 

opportunities, to a harvest that is ripe for the reaper, a field 
that is continually expanding. By the time you have your 
degrees you will go forth to the battle of life in a nation 
of 60,000,000 of freemen. You go forth, each of you, with as 
good an opportunity in life as any other man has, and you go 
with the added advantage which education gives. I commend 
you to 3"our responsibility, for the responsibilities of an educated 
American are higher and deeper and broader than those of an 
educated man in any other land ; and in proportion as your 
opportunities are greater will you be held to sterner account in 
this life and in the life which is to come. 

[At South Bend, Indiana, Oct. 18, 1884.] 

Men of Indiana, — The struggle in all human society is 
first for bread. It is idle to propound fine theories to a man 
who is hungry ; it is idle to commend a political principle to 
one who is in need of shelter ; it is idle to talk philosophy to one 
who is naked. Food and clothing are the primary require- 
ments of human society, the primary elements of human prog- 
ress, and to secure these you must put the people in the way 
of earning good wages. I never saw any man moved to enthu- 
siasm by silently contemplating the prosperity of another 
while he himself was in need. To move him you must make 
him feel that he can win prosperity himself. The beginning 
of wise legislation, therefore, is to give to every citizen of 
the land a fair and equal chance, to leave the race of life 
open and free for all. What agency will best accomplish that? 
What legislation will most tend to that end ? Certainly it will 
not tend to that end to throw open our ports and say, Send 
ye all here your fabrics made by the cheapest and most dis- 
tressed labor of Europe in order that our rich people shall have 
every thing at the lowest price, and in order that those who 
are not rich, but who are just opening their shops and building 
their factories, may meet a ruinous competition ! If you do 
that you cannot spin a wheel or turn a lathe in these manufac- 
turing establishments which I see on all hands unless you can 
get 3^our labor at the European prices. 

We begin just there. From these considerations we deduce 
the conclusion that the Protective tariff is primarily for the 



446 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

benefit of the laboring man, because, if you consider any manu- 
factured article, you find that the chief constituent element in 
its cost is the labor. In many cases the material is but one per 
cent and the labor is ninety-nine per cent. Therefore, all legis- 
lation of a Protective character is, and must be, mainly for 
the benefit of labor, because labor is the principal element in the 
cost of the fabric. Hence, if there be any man Avho is pre- 
eminently and above all others interested in the tariff it is the 
laboring man. 

A Protective tariff was one of the first fruits of the election 
of Mr. Lincoln. We have had it for more than twenty years 
on the statute-book, with various amendments which have been 
added from time to time, to make it more protective, and the 
result is that all history, ancient, modern and mediaeval, may 
be challenged for a National progress like unto that we have 
made since 1861. I am merely reciting the facts and figures 
of your assessors' books and of the United States census tables, 
when I say that in the last twenty years of the history of this 
country we have added more wealth, twice over, than we had 
acquired in the centuries between the discovery of the country 
by Columbus and the election of Abraham Lincoln to the 
Presidency. There must have been some peculiar and potent 
agent at work to produce this great result. That agent was 
the Protective tariff operating to nerve the arm of labor and 
reward it fairly and liberally. Whether that policy shall be con- 
tinued or whether it shall be abandoned is the controlling issue 
in this campaign. All other questions are laid aside for the 
time. There are many other questions which are worthy of 
consideration, but two weeks from Tuesday next we shall have 
an election in every State in the Union, to determine with 
reference to this question, the character of the next Congress 
and the future policy of the Government. You have before 
you the Republican party, pledged to sustain the Protective 
tariff, and illustrating that pledge by a specific and consistent 
example, extending through the last twenty-three years. You 
have on the other hand, the Democratic party, which in fifty- 
one years (since 1833) has never in a single instance voted for 
Protection, and never controlled a Congress in which it did 
not oppose Protection. 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 447 

I say, therefore, to the laboring men and to the mechanics, 
some of whom may do me the honor to listen to me, j^our 
unions, your leagues, all those Labor associations you have 
formed for your own advantage and your own advancement, 
are well and proper in their way. It is your right to have them 
and to administer them as you choose, but they are not as 
strong as a rope of sand against the ill-paid labor of Europe, 
if you take away the Protective tariff which is now your 
background and support. Do not therefore be deluded by the 
idea that you can dispense with the Protective tariff and sub- 
stitute for it your labor unions. I do not distract your atten- 
tion with any other question. I do not stop to dwell upon 
the great issues that have been made and settled by the Repub- 
licans within the last twenty-three years. That party has made 
a deej^er and more serious imprint in history than any other 
political organization that ever was charged with a great respon- 
sibility in the United States, and it is the patriotic pride of 
every man in its ranks that he has been a member of it and has 
shared its responsibilities, its triumphs, its honors. 

[At Fort Wayne, Indiana, Oct. 20, 1884.] 

Citizens of Indiana, — The October elections in Ohio and 
West Virginia have put a new phase on the National contest, 
or rather they have reproduced the phase of former years. 
The Democratic party, as of old, consider now that the}^ have 
the South solid again ; they believe that they are sure of one 
hundred and fifty-three Electoral votes from the sixteen South- 
ern States, and they expect, or the}^ hope, or they dream, that 
they may secure New York and Indiana and that with New York 
and Indiana added to the solid South, they will seize the Gov- 
ernment of the Nation. I do not believe that the farmers, the 
business men, the manufacturers, the merchants, the mechanics, 
and, last of all and most of all, I do not believe that the soldiers 
of Indiana can be j)ut to that use. I do not believe that the 
men who added lustre and renown to your State through four 
years of brave service in a bloody war can be used to call to 
the administration of the Government the men who organized 
the Rebellion. In the Senate of the T'^nited States the Demo- 
cratic party have thirty-seven members, of which number thirty- 



448 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

two come from the South. Of their strength in the House of 
Representatives the majority come from the South, and now 
the intention is, with an absolutely solidified Electoral vote from 
the South, added to the votes of the two States I have named, 
to seize the Government of the Union. 

That seizure means a great deal, my friends ; it means that 
as the South furnishes three-fourths of the Democratic strength, 
it will be given the lead and control of the Nation in event of 
a Democratic triumph. It means that the financial and indus- 
trial systems of the country shall be placed under the direction 
of the South; that the currency, the banks, the tariff, the inter- 
nal-revenue laws — in short, that the whole system upon which 
the business of the country depends shall be placed under the 
control of that section. It means that the Constitutional 
amendments to which Southern leaders are so bitterly opposed 
shall be enforced only so far as they may believe in them ; that 
tlie National credit as guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment, that the payment of pensions to the soldiers of the Union 
as guaranteed in the same amendment, shall be under their 
control ; and what that control might mean can be measured 
by the bitterness with which those amendments were resisted 
by the Democrats of the South. There is not one measure of 
banking, of tariff, of finance, of public credit, of pensions, not 
one line of administration upon which the Government is con- 
ducted to-day, to which the Democrats of the South are not 
recorded as hostile, and to give them control would mean a 
change the like of which has not been known in modern times. 
It would be as if the dead Stuarts were restored to the throne 
of England ; as if the Bourbons should be invited to administer 
the Government of the French Republic; as if the Florentine 
Dukes should be called back and empowered to govern the new 
Kingdom of Italy as consolidated under Victor Emanuel. 

Such a triumph, fellow-citizens, would, in the end, be a fear- 
ful misfortune to the South itself. That section, under the 
wise administration of the Government b}^ the Republican party, 
has been steadily and rapidly gaining for the last ten years in 
all the elements of material prosperity. It has added enor- 
mously to its wealth since the close of the war, and has shared 
fully in the general advance of the country. To call that sec- 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 449 

tion now to the Rulership of tlie Nation would disturb its own 
social and political economy, would rekindle smouldering pas- 
sions, and, under the peculiar leadership to which it would be 
subjected, it would organize an administration of resentment, 
of reprisal, of revenge. No greater misfortune than that could 
come to the Nation or to the South. It would come as a re-ac- 
tion against the progress of liberal principles in that section — 
a progress so rapid that the Republicans are waging earnest 
contests in those States whose interests are most demonstrably 
identified with the policy of Protection as against the baleful 
spectacle of a solid South. 

1 am sure that Indiana will protest, and, on the whole, will 
conclude to stand where she has stood in the past. I believe 
that you will stand where you stood in the war ; that you will 
stand for the principles and the policies which have made your 
State rich and prosperous, and which have made the American 
Republic, in manufactures, in agriculture, the leading Nation of 
the world, not merely in a material sense, but in a moral and 
philanthropic sense — a country in which every man has as good 
a chance as every other man, and which, among other great 
gifts, bestov.'s absolutely free suffrage and free education. You 
enjoy that suffrage, and the fourth day of November next you 
are to say for which party, for which policy, you will cast your 
votes. Not for me personally. I am not speaking for myself. 
No man ever met with a misfortune in being defeated for the 
Presidency, while men have met great mishn-tunes in being 
elected to it. I am pleading no personal cause. I am pleading 
the cause of the American people. I am pleading the cause of 
the American farmer, the American manufacturer, the Ameri- 
can mechanic, and the American laborer against the world. I 
am reproached by some excellent people for appearing before 
these multitudes of my countrymen, upon the ground that it is 
inconsistent with the dignity of the office for which I am 
named. I do not feel it to be so. There is not a courtier in 
Europe so proud but that he is glad to uncover his head in the 
presence of his sovereign. So I uncover in the presence of 
the only earthly sovereignty I acknowledge, and bow with 
pride to the free people of America. 



450 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

[At Torre Haute, Indiana, Oct. 23, 1884.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — The Southoni question, as for years it 
has been popularly termed, is precipitated into this canvass by 
the South itself, and to neglect to notice it would be to over- 
look one of the most poAverful and dangerous factors in the 
National contest. To understand that question properly, it 
should be remembered that politically there are two Souths, 
which we may term respectively the new South and the old 
South. The new South represents the awakened liberal senti- 
ment that is striving for the industrial development of that 
naturally rich section of the Union which recognizes the neces- 
sity of a tariff for protection, which casts the bitter memories of 
the civil conflict behind, and which is hopefully struggling in 
Virginia, in North Carolina, in Tennessee, for better things than 
hate and vengeance and injustice. This element includes many 
men who served in the Confederate armies. It naturally affili- 
ates with the Republican party, and it seeks to lead the people 
away from the prejudices of the past to a contemplation of the 
majestic future which wise and magnanimous action may bring to 
the South, in common with the North and with the entire Union. 

The old South represents the spirit of the rebellion, cher- 
ishes sentiments of sullen discontent, is perpetually re-affirm- 
ing its faith in the rightfvdness of "the Lost Cause," is full 
of bitter reproaches against those who triumphed in the war 
for the Union, regards negro suffrage with abhorrence, main- 
tains "the white line" as the proclamation of hostility to 
the colored race, and is ready to use whatever amount of 
intimidation or violence may be necessary to preserve its own 
political and personal mastery in the South. It is unques- 
tionably dominant in all the old slave States, and is in open 
and avowed affiliation with the Democratic party of the North. 
It constitutes three-fourths of the electoral strength of the 
Democratic party in the Nation, and in the event of Demo- 
cratic triumph Avould be in absolute and undisputed control of 
the Government. The struggle of the Republicans is for the 
amelioration, improvement, and progress of the South, as well 
as of the North, but they are confronted everywhere and 
resisted everywhere by the determined and hitherto triumphant 
Southern Democracy. 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 451 

The aim of the Democratic party, as I have already said, is 
to conjoin the Electoral votes of New York and Indiana with 
the Electoral votes of the sixteen Southern States ; and it is for 
New York and Indiana to consider just what that means, and 
where it would carry them. New York has a greater stake 
than any other State of the Union in maintaining sound prin- 
ciples of government, in upholding the National credit, in 
perpetuating the financial system which embodies the matured 
wisdom of the last twenty years, in sustaining the Protective 
policy. Indiana has a stake less than that of New York only 
as her population and wealth are less. Do the citizens of those 
two States fully comprehend what it means to trust the national 
credit, the national finances, the national pensions, the Protec- 
tive system, and all the great interests which are under the 
control of the National Government, to the old South, with its 
bitterness, its unreconciled temper, its narrowness of vision, its 
hostility to all Northern interests, its constant longing to revive 
an impossible past, its absolute incapacity to measure the sweep 
of the present and the magnitude of our future? 

The North and the South, under Republican administi-ation 
of the Government, will ultimately come into harmonious rela- 
tions. In the last ten years great progress has been made 
toward that result, and the next ten years may witness the 
effixcement of all prejudices and hostilities and the absolute 
triumph of just and magnanimous policies. But all prospects 
of that result would be defeated and destroyed by giving the 
old South possession of the national power. Among the first of 
the baleful effects that would follow would be the crushing out 
of liberal progress in the South, and the pnictical nullification 
of all that has been gained by the reconstruction laws Avhich 
followed the Rebellion. The people of New York and the 
people of Indiana are now asked to aid in bringing about that 
deplorable result, to be followed by the abandonment or the 
reversal of the financial and industrial policies under which 
the Nation has prospered so marvelously since the close of the 
war. I cannot believe that you will do it, because such a 
course is forl)idden by every instinct of patriotism, as well as 
every consideration of enlightened self-interest and self-respect. 



462 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

[At Milwaukee, Oct. 27, 1SS4.] 

Citizens or Wisconsin, — The Republican party had its 
birth ill the North-West, and there it has always found steady 
support. The five great Commonwealths that were formed from 
the old North-west Territory represent to-day an empire — 
an empire founded in 1787, but an empire which has had its 
greatest growth since 1861. The growth of that imperial sec- 
tion of the Union has been most rapid under Republican admin- 
istration of the National Government, and under the continuous 
influence of a Protective tariff. In the last twenty-three years 
its wealth has trebled. In the next twenty-three years, with a 
Protective tariff in operation, its wealth will increase in even 
greater ratio. I do not come here at this late day in the 
National campaign to argue any question. I come merely to 
recite historic facts, and leave you to draw the inference. The 
Protective tariff has found its steady friend in the Republican 
party. It has found its steady foe in the Democralic party. 
Under the Protective system, agriculture, manufactures, and 
commerce have flourished in equal degree; and the question 
now before the voters of Wisconsin, the question before the 
voters of the Nation, is whether that system shall be abandoned, 
or whether it shall be continued. The sixteen States of the 
South will in all probability vote against it. It remains to be 
seen whether a suificient re-enforcement can be obtained from 
the North to hand over the Government to the domination of 
the Free-trade South. 

As the Republican party had its birth in the North-West, we 
come to you now for a re-baptism in the original faith, and for 
added strength to the prestige of the party. I do not believe 
that Wisconsin, I do not believe that Illinois, I do not believe 
that Michigan, I do not believe that Indiana, I am sure that 
Ohio, those great component members of the old North-west 
Territory, — I do not believe that any of them can be induced 
to undo the work which they began in 1854. I do not believe 
that the free arms and the free hearts of the great free North- 
West can be used to turn the Government of this nation over 
to the men who sought its destruction. In that faith I greet 
you. In that faith I leave you. In that faith I thank you pro- 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 453 

foiindly for a reception which is proportioned to the grandeur 
of your empire and the warmth of your hearts. 

[A large number of German- Americans waited on Mr. Blaine at the Grand 
Pacific Hotel, Chicago, and through their Chairman, Professor Kistler, made an 
address, and Mr. Blaine responded as follows: — ] 

Professor and German-American Citizens of Chi- 
cago, — Any tender of your friendship and confidence would 
be welcome and grateful to my feelings. What must I then 
say of one that is so eloquent and so cordial ? I am not un- 
aware in meeting you that there has been an effort made to 
prejudice the minds of German-American citizens against me, 
but I never feared that the effort would succeed, because 
the one great distinction of the German mind is deliberation 
in coming to a conclusion, thoroughness of investigation, com- 
plete and entire justice of final judgment. I recognize the 
perfect truthfulness of what you say of the devotion of German- 
Americans to the flag of the country and the nationality they 
have assumed. I have long been acquainted with the German 
character. My birth and my rearing in Pennsylvania made me 
familiar from childhood with the German character, with its 
steadiness, its industry, its fidelity, its integrity, its truth in 
friendship, its loyalty to Government. Pennsylvania owes much 
to her German population, to the Muhlenbergs, the Heisters, the 
Wolfs, the Snyders, the Markles, the Shunks, who liave illus- 
trated her annals and with whom I am connected b}^ ties of 
good will, of kindly associations inherited through five genera- 
tions of family friendships that are warm and cordial to-day. 

When on my Western tour I reached Ohio, I sought conference 
with German fellow-citizens, and was assured, and subsequent 
events have confirmed the assurance, that so far from being 
hostile to me, they were, as I had a right to expect and as you 
60 eloquently declare, cordially disposed towards me. Thank- 
ing you again for the kindly expressions of your address I am 
glad to take each one of you by the hand in token of friendship 
and regard. 

[At Binghamton, New York, Oct. 28, 1884.] 

My Friends and Fellow-Citizens, — I am sure that no 
man who loves the American Union can ever visit the city of 



454 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

Binghaniton without a reverent remembrance of Daniel S. 
Dickinson, and no man who was contemporary with the great 
civil struggle which involved the fate of American nationality 
can ever forget the strength, the encouragement, and enthusiasm 
which Mr. Dickinson brought to the hn-al cause when he for- 
sook his party for his countr3^ Not precisely in the same 
phase, but involving like issues, is the contest in which we are 
engaged to-day. For as we then confronted the South arra3'ed 
in war against the Union, so we confront it now in an attempt 
by a great combination to seize the Government of the United 
States and control it through the same men who rebelled 
against it. The reason I refer to that here and now is that 
that combination will be absolutely ineffective unless aided Ijy 
the vote of New York, and I am sure that the county of 
Broome and the valley of the Susquehanna will enter an in- 
dignant protest against taking the Empire State from the great 
cordon of free States, always loyal to the Union, to be joined 
with the States of the solidified South. 

This question, fellow-citizens, is not one of mere sentiment. 
It is not a mere question of patriotism. It is a question of 
material interest. The triumph of the South in this contest 
would mean the triumph of Free Trade and the destruction of 
the Protective system. In the whole history of that marvelous 
prosperity wliich has made New York the most populous and 
the most wealthy State in the Union, you have never made any 
progress comparable to that which you have made since 1861. 
When Mr. Buchanan, the last Democratic President, went out 
of office the wealth of New York was $1,800,000,000 as shown 
by the National census. Twenty years later, under a continu- 
ous Protective tariff, the enactment of which was the first work 
of the Ptepublican party after it gained power, your progress 
had been so rapid that your wealth had advanced from $1,800,- 
000,000 to $6,300,000,000, as shown by the census of 1880. No 
such progress was ever made before in the history of human 
government. And there is not an intelligent man of any party 
who does not know that that progress was in large measure due 
to the influence of the Protective tariff. New York is not in 
my opinion ready to give it up. New York is not ready to join 
the solid South for Free Trade. New York is ready to stand 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 455 

by the Republican party and Protective tariff. I am sure that 
you realize your responsibility and need no stimulus from words 
of mine. 

[At a dinner given by prominent Republicans of New York at Delinonico's, 
Oct. 29, Honorable William M. Evarts presiding.] 

Mr. President, — It is a great reversal of positions, that 
makes me hear you ascribe leadership to me. For it has been 
my duty and my pleasure in these long years to follow you ; to 
learn from you wisdom in public affairs, to join with my coun- 
trymen in ascribing to you not merely the great merit of leader- 
ship in the noblest of professions, but to yield our admiration 
for the pre-eminent success which has given you the opportunity 
to lead in the three most important cases ever pleaded by a 
member of the American bar. First, in resisting your own 
party in Avhat you deemed the impolicy, if not the madness, of 
impeaching a President; second, in maintaining before the 
greatest international tribunal that has assembled in modern 
times the rights of your country and obtaining redress for 
wrongs to her that grew out of the civil war ; and third, in 
perhaps averting civil commotion by pleading before an Elec- 
toral Commission a peaceful settlement of the angriest political 
discussion that ever arose between parties in the United States. 
I turn now from your President to thank you, merchants, 
professional men, leaders in the great and complex society of 
New York — to thank you for receiving me, not merely at this 
festal board, but also in that far more impressive reception 
which the close of this rainy day witnessed in your broad and 
beautiful avenue. I could not, I am sure, by any possible 
stretch of vanity take this generous demonstration to myself. 
It is given to me as the representative for the time of the prin- 
ciples which you and I hold in common touching those great 
interests which underlie, as we believe, the prosperity of the 
nation. It is fitting that the commercial metropolis of the con- 
tinent should lead ; it is fitting that the financial centre of the 
continent should lead ; it is fitting that this great city, second 
only in the world, should give an expression to the continent 
of its views and its judgment on the nuportant questions to be 
decided Tuesday next by the American people. 



456 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

I venture — not tliat I know it so well as you, but that I am 
spokesman for the present — I venture to remind you, men of 
New York, with your wealth and your just influence, that 
seventy per cent of the entire property of this city has been 
acquired since Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on the 4th of 
March, 18G1. I should not mention here a fact of percentage 
and of statistics if it did not carry witli it an argument and a 
moral. The common apprehension in regard to New York is 
that it is simply a great commercial cit}', that its exports and 
imports re2:)resent the major part of all that is exported from or 
imported into the United States. That we all know. But we 
are often prone to forget that New York is the largest manu- 
facturing city in the world, with perhaps a single exception ; 
that of the 86,000,000,000 of manufactures annually produced 
in the United States, this Empire State furnishes one-fifth — 
$1,200,000,000 — of which this Empire City produces 8500,000,- 
000. From these facts comes that great sympathy, that iden- 
tity of interest which has taken the place of the previously 
existing conflicts between what liave been known as the manu- 
facturing and the commercial interests, and has. taught us that 
there can be no true prosperity in the country unless the three 
great interests comprehended by agriculture, manufactures and 
commerce are acting in harmon}^, the one with the other, and 
joining together for a common end for the common good. 

It is usually thought that a change of Government means 
but little ; that we come together with our votes on a given day 
and count them as the sun goes down, and one party goes out 
and another comes in. But, gentlemen, it is worth while to 
remember that the United States is proceeding to-day upon a 
given basis of public policy — I might say upon a given series 
of public policies. We have a financial sj^stem ; we have a 
currency system ; we have an important national credit ; we 
have a lev^dng of duties, as has been so well described by your 
distinguished President of the evening, so adjusted that the in- 
dustries of the country are fostered and encouraged thereby ; 
we liave three important Constitutional amendments that grew 
out of the war, upon which, at this hour, and in the hours, and 
the days, and the weeks, and the years to follow, great issues 
hang in this country. Are we — if we should be defeated and 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 457 

our opponents successful — arc we to understand that these 
policies are to be reversed? Then we should, one and all, pre- 
pare for a grand disaster. For a single illustration, let me 
recall to your minds that the repeal of ten lines in the National 
Banking Act would restore to vitality and to vigor tlie old 
State-bank system from which we had happily escaped, as we 
thought, for all the remainder of our lives. 

If these policies are to be reversed you will have to recast 
your accounts and review your ledgers and prepare for a new 
and, I may say, a dangerous departure ; and if these policies 
are not to be reversed they will certainly be better maintained 
by the i:)arty which originated them and has thus far snstained 
them with energy and success. 

As I have already said, we speak of New York as the great 
exporting and importing city, and from that perhaps we often 
give an exaggerated importance, relatively speidviug, to our 
foreign trade because this magnificent metropolis never would 
have attained its grandeur and its wealth upon the foreign trade 
alone. We should never forget, important as that trade is, 
representing the enormous sum of ^1^-500,000,000 annually, that 
it sinks into insignificance and is dwarfed out of sight when we 
think of those vast domestic exchanges of which New York is 
the admitted centre and which annually exceed '^20fi00,000fi00. 

Our foreign trade naturally brings to our consideration the 
foreign relations of this country, so well described by my dis- 
tinguished friend as always simple and sincere. It is tJie safe- 
guard of republics that they are not adapted to war. I mean 
aggressive war. And it is the safeguard of this Republic that 
in a defensive war we can defy the world. This nation to-day 
is in profound peace with the world. But, in my judgment, it 
has before it a great duty which will not only make that pro- 
found peace permanent, but set such an example as will abso- 
lutely abolish war on this continent, and, by a great example 
and a lofty moral precedent, ultimately abolish it in other con- 
tinents. I am justified in saying that every one of the seven- 
teen independent Powers of North and South America is not 
only willing but ready — is not only ready but eager — to enter 
into a solemn compact in a Congress that may be called in the 
name of Peace, to agree that if, unhappily, differences shall 



458 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

arise — as differences will arise between men and between 
nations — they shall be settled upon the peaceful and Christian 
basis of arbitration. 

As I have often said before, I am glad to repeat in this 
great centre of civilization and power, that in my judgment no 
National spectacle, no International spectacle, no Continental 
spectacle, could be more grand than that presented by the 
Republics of the Western World meeting and solemnly agreeing 
that neither the soil of North nor of South America shall ever 
hereafter be stained by brothers' blood. 

The Republican party, gentlemen, cannot be said to be on 
trial. To be on trial implies something to be tried for. The 
Republican party in its twenty-three years of rulership has 
advanced the interests of this country far beyond that of any 
of its predecessors in power. It has elevated the moral and 
intellectual standard of America — it has increased its wealth 
in a ratio never before realized or even dreamed of. 

Statistics, I know, are dry, and I have dwelt so much upon 
them in the last six weeks that they might be supposed to be 
especially dry to me. Yet I never can forget the eloquence of 
the figures which tell us that the wealth of this great Empire 
State when the Republican party took the reins of govern- 
ment was estimated at il, 800,000,000, and that twenty years 
afterward, under the influence of an industrial and financial 
system for which that party is proudly responsible, under the 
influence of that industrial and financial system, the same tests 
which gave you $1,800,000,000 of property in 1860 gave you 
$6,300,000,000 in 1880. There has never been in aU the history 
of financial progress — there has never been in all the history of 
the world — any parallel to this; and I am sure, gentlemen, 
that the Republican party is not arrogant nor over-confident 
when it claims to itself the credit of organizing- and maintain- 
ing the industrial system which gave to you and your associates 
in enterprise the equal and just laws which enabled you to 
make this marvelous progress. 

As I have said, that party is not on trial. If it has made 
mistakes, they have been merged and forgotten in the greater 
success which has corrected them. If it has had internal differ- 
ences, they are laid aside. If it has had factional strife, I am 



SPEECHP:S during the canvass of 1884. 459 

sure that lias ceased. And 1 am equally sure that, looking to 
the history of the past, and looking to that great future which 
we are justified in prophesying, this imperial State cannot afford 
to reverse, and therefore ivill 7iot reverse those great policies 
upon which it has grown and advanced from glory to glory. 

I thank you, gentlemen ; I thank that larger number with 
whom I have already had the pleasure of exchanging greetings 
to-day ; I thank the ministers, the merchants, the lawyers, the 
professional men, the mechanics, the laboring men of New York, 
for a cordial reception, an over-generous welcome, which in all 
the mutations of my future life will be to me among the proud- 
est and most precious of my memories. 

[Ill response to a reception from the ladies of Brooklyn in the Academy of 
Music in that city, Oct. 30, 1884.] 

In the important National contest wdiich now draws to a 
close, much of the progress of which I have personally wit- 
nessed, two things have especially impressed me — the influence 
exerted by the women of the United States, and that exerted 
by the young men, and I do not know that I ought to divide 
these, for I attribute the great interest and activity of the 
young men largely to the influence of their mothers. The Re- 
publican party owes a great debt to the women of the United 
States. Not a debt now maturing, but one which began at the 
foundation of the party. The literature which sprang from 
the pen of woman did much — I was about to say did most — to 
concentrate that great army of freedom which in the conflict 
that came upon the country, destroyed the institution of slavery. 
I am sure that when the news came that I was selected for the 
important and responsible post in which I now stand, I received 
no greeting that meant more, or was more grateful to me, than 
the one which came to me from that lady whose gifted pen im- 
parted spirit and soul to the anti-slavery agitation wdien she 
gave to the world " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

I do not feel, therefore, that the ladies of Brooklyn are taking 
any new step in this cordial welcome — to which a grateful 
heart feels it impossible to make adequate response — I do not 
feel that they are taking any new step or exerting any other in- 
fluence than that wlrich has been constantly exerted by women 



460 POLITICAL DISCUSSION'S. 

during the tliirty years in the history of the United States in 
which tlie Republican party has led the National progress. I 
know the wide-spread influence that goes out from such a greet- 
ing as this. I know that, without suffrage, woman casts often 
the weightiest vote. I know that the great moral strength, — 
shoAving itself constantly in political strength, — with which 
the Republican party has been insjiired in its struggles and its 
triumphs, has come from the gracious and pure influence of 
woman. I make, therefore, due and profound acknowledgment, 
not merely for the great significance of this occasion, but for 
whatever of personal compliment it may imply. But I should 
be vain indeed if I should take to myself any large part of that 
which means only an expression of sympathy and support in 
the commanding contest in which, for the time, I am called to 
represent the highest patriotism, the best heart, the loftiest 
aspiration of the American Republic. 

[At the Grand Opera Iloiise, Brooklyn, New York, Oct. 30, 1SS4.] 

Citizens of Brooklyn, — Thirty years of effort, twenty- 
four years of power, have certainly vindicated the claims of 
the Republican party to general and to National confidence, 
and the leading question now to be decided by the popular vote 
in all the States is, whether that industrial system and that 
financial system which go hand in hand shall be superseded, 
and whether the experiment of Free Trade, with a possible 
change in our currency system, shall be resorted to by the vol- 
untary consent of the American people. Certainly there is no 
man intelligent enough to reckon up his week's wages on Satur- 
day night who does not know that the only difference between 
a day's pay for labor in the United States and a day's pay for 
labor in the British Isles is that which is produced by and 
results from the Protective tariff. So that the American 
laborer or mechanic who voluntarily casts his ballot for the 
elevation to power of a party committed to Free Trade casts 
his ballot for the reduction of his own wages. 

I desire to repeat here what I have said more than once else- 
where ; that all the voluntary associations which laboring men 
and mechanics resort to in their trades-unions and like co-opera- 
tive efforts — well enough in themselves, desirable no doubt in 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1S84. 461 

many respects, meeting certainly with no word of criticism 
from me — are yet entirely ineffectual as a means of upholding 
the scale of American wages unless behind them there be that 
protection and support which come from the levying of duties 
on the scale embodied in the Protective tariff. Here at home 
the trades-unions may protect you from the exactions of an 
unjust employer ; but how, in an era of Free Trade, can they 
protect you from the importation of cheap fabrics from the Old 
World which must necessarily displace your own, or probably 
compel the abandonment of the rival manufactures in this 
country ? So that what I desire to enforce and impress upon 
men of enterprise and men of prudence is, that their only safe- 
guard is in ujiholding that industrial system which prevents 
ruinous competition in the fabrics they are making, and that 
financial system which, when a dollar is earned, enables it to 
be paid with a hundred cents. It is the peculiar merit of the 
Republican party that, while from its hostility to slave-labor^ 
with the natural consequence, protection to free labor, it has 
earned the riglit to the suffrage and support of the industrial 
class, it has never done it in the demagogic spirit which seeks 
to arouse the prejudice of labor against the rights of capital. 
It has continually taught the wise doctrine that capital and 
labor are friends and not enemies ; that in co-operation they 
can produce prosperity, but that in hostility they can produce 
only adversity. The Republican party has taken care that 
capital shall not encroach upon labor, and that labor shall be 
so protected that it shall have no cause of enmity to capital. 

[Mr. Blaiue's si:)eech in New Haven, Connecticut, on Nov. 1, 18S4.] 

Fellow-Citizexs, — Since my arrival in this city, an address 
from the clergymen of New Haven has been placed in my 
hands expressing their personal respect and confidence, and, 
through the person who delivered it, the assurance that on 
public questions and political issues under the laws and Con- 
stitution of the United States they know no sect ; they know 
no Protestant, no Catholic, no Hebrew, but the equality of all. 
In the city of Hartford this morning, a letter was put into my 
hands asking me why I charged the Democratic party with 
being inspired by "rum, Romanism and rebellion." My answer 



462 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

is first that an unfortunate and ill-considered expression of an- 
other man was falsely attributed to me ; and, in the next place, 
it gives me an opportunity to say, at the close of the National 
campaign, that in the public speeches which I have made, I 
have refrained carefully and instinctively from any disrespect- 
ful allusion to the Democratic party. I differ from that party 
widely on matters of princijDle, but I have too much respect for 
the millions of my countrymen whom it includes, to assail it 
with epithets or abuse. I am sure that I am the last man in 
the United States who would make a disrespectful allusion to 
another man's religion. The United States guarantees freedom 
of religious opinion. Before the law and under the Constitu- 
tion, the Protestant, the Catholic and the Hebrew stand entitled 
to absolutely the same recognition and the same protection. If 
disrespectful allusion is to be made against the religion of any 
man, I repeat that I am the last man to make it, for though 
Protestant by conviction myself, and connected with a' Protes- 
tant church, I should esteem myself of all men the most de- 
graded if, under any pressure or under any temptation, I could, 
in any presence, make a disrespectful allusion to that ancient 
faith in which my mother lived and died. 

The question now before the people of the United States, 
my fellow-citizens, is not a religious one, is not a question of 
creeds though it comes home to the fireside of every American 
citizen. We have enjoyed in this country for the last twenty- 
three years the numberless advantages of a Protective tariff. 
There is not a man within the sound of my voice, there is not 
a man in Connecticut, there is not a man in New England, 
there is not a man in the United States, who is not directly or 
indirectly interested in the Protective tariff. I see before me 
a large assemblage, including, doubtless, many who earn their 
bread in the sweat of their faces, and to whom the daily wages 
of labor is a matter of great importance. I beg to remind them 
that the only agency which secures them higher wages for their 
labor than a man in the British Isles receives for the same 
labor, is the Protective tariff. When I look abroad in your 
State, and when I examine your statistics, I find that Connecti- 
cut has doubled its wealth in the last twenty years ; and I sub- 
mit that that rapid ratio of progress is a direct result of the 



SPEECHES DURING THE CANVASS OF 1884. 463 

Protective tariff. Every man in this State, whether he be a 
capitalist or a laborer, whether he be manufacturer or opera- 
tive, finds that the question of protecting American industry 
enters into the warp and woof of his daily life. It is a cardinal 
doctrine in the creed of the Republican party that a Protective 
tariff shall be maintained, and it has been the invariable practice 
of the Democratic party in Congress for more than fifty years 
past, to oppose the policy of Protection. You choose between 
the policies of Protection and Free Trade when you choose 
between the Republican and Democratic parties. The decision, 
fellow-citizens, rests with you ! 

The omens in the present contest are to be spoken of by you, 
not by me ; but there are one or two things connected with the 
canvass to which I may with propriety call your attention. I 
beg especially to refer to the fact that, in a larger degree than 
in any other campaign of which I have personal knowledge, 
the Republican party has the inestimable advantage of the 
sympathy and support of tlie great mass of the young men of 
the country, and the young men carry with them strength, 
confidence, the power to bear burdens, and the power to give 
encouragement to others. The Republican party began its 
existence thirty years ago, with the support of the young 
men. Twenty-eight years ago, before many who now hear me 
knew any thing of political contests, that party entered the 
field for the first time in a National struggle. It selected a 
young man for its leader ; it selected a man in his forty-third 
year — the same age at which Washington was intrusted with 
the command of the Continental Army — a young man of great 
zeal, of great intelligence, and of a career so heroic that it par- 
takes largely of romance. Under his leadership the Republican 
party, in its very first National contest, alarmed, if it did not 
defeat, its opponents. Since then twenty-eight years have been 
added to his age, bringing it up to the psalmist's limit — three- 
score years and ten , but he is still fresh and vigorous in body 
and in mind, still warm in his support of the Republican prin- 
ciples, and it is my especial pleasure to-day that I can, as I now 
do, introduce to you General John C. Fremont. 



4G4 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

[At Boston the evening before the Presidential election, November Gd, at a 
dinner tendered to Mr. Blaine by leading Ilepublicans, Honorable Ilenry Cabot 
Lodge presiding.] 

Me,. Chairman and Gentlemen, — For reasons which I 
need not detail, a reception of this character in the city of 
Boston at the close of the National campaign is peculiarly 
grateful to me, and I thank Mr. Lodge for giving me the oppor- 
tunity to thank you. It is too late to argue, or even to state, 
the great issues involved in the canvass which closes to-night, 
but 1 am sure that those issues constitute a difference between 
parties so broad and so deep that their decision, one way or the 
other, will affect for weal or for woe the history of the United 
States for many years to come. I am sure that the Constitu- 
tional amendments which have grown out of the civil struggle 
and which have in so many respects, I might sa}^, changed the 
very framework of our Government, have been made under the 
lead and by the power of the Republican party, and are now in 
its keeping. I have frequently said elsewhere, and I here now 
repeat, that to transfer the political j)ower of the country to 
the Democratic party at this time would by no means be one of 
those ordinary transfers of the Government from one party 
to another which the gray-haired men witliin m}^ view witnessed 
more than once in the last generation. It would not be merely 
an instance of one party going out and another coming in. 
It would be rather a reversal and overturning of the indus- 
trial systems of the Government, of the financial systems of 
the Government, in short a transfer of the sovereignty of the 
country of far greater consequence than the ordinary changes 
of dynasty which occur in European Governments of a differ- 
ent form from ours. 

I close this canvass, Mr. Chairman, in which I have taken an 
active part, with a profound conviction that intelligent as the 
voters of the United States are — and I am certainly address- 
ing some of the most intelligent of them — accustomed as they 
are to give heed to the weight and tendency of the questions 
to be decided, the people of the United States have not yet 
measured, nor, as I believe, yet fully comprehended, what it 
would mean to transfer this Government to the absolute control 
of the Southern States of this Union. Nor do I here and now 



SrEECIIES DURING THE CAXVASS OF 1881. 4G5 

stop to give my own idea of wliat such a change wouhl mean. 
It AYOuhl be ont of phxce. I should refrain for the additional 
reason tliat au}- thing I miglit no\A- say wouhl be too late to in- 
fluence popular judgment in any direction, and for the third 
reason that in so far as my own voice could reach and influence 
the just judgment of the people of the United States I have 
exerted it to the extent of my strength. I have never ofl^ered 
an apology or explanation for taking what some of my closest 
friends regarded as an extraordinary step in going before the 
people somewhat more freely than has been the habit of those 
ciiosen as the Presidential candidates of great parties. But I 
will now say that I did it — and I desire to put this on record 
— because I thought that the peculiar character of the canvass 
was my personal justification for doing it. I am a profound 
believer in a popular government, and I know no reason wliy 
I should not face the American j^cople. I did it, too, for 
the more specific reason that I believed there was danger lest the 
leading question which relates to the Protective system of 
America should be partially or perhaps wholly excluded from 
that consideration by the people which its merits deserved, and, 
intrusted as I was with the function of representing all mem- 
bers of the Republican party, I felt that I would in an especial 
deo-ree obtain a hearing. 

I have returned somewhat weary, somewhat broken in voice, 
as your ears have already detected, but I have returned with 
even a more profound trust than I had at the outset in the judg- 
ment, in the fairness, in the impartiality, in the generosity of 
tlie great mass of American citizens. I go to my home to-mor- 
row not without a strong confidence in the result of the ballot, 
but with a heart that shall not in the least degree be troubled 
by any verdict that may be returned by the American people. 
I have sought in my entire canvass to lose sight of myself and 
of whatever personal fortune I have at stake, in the far greater^ 
and far grander, and far more enduring issue which for the 
time I was submitting to popular judgment. 



466 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1884. 



[Mr. Blaine's speech to a large number of Republican friends of the city and 
county of his residence, who serenaded him on the evening of Nov. IS, 1884.] 

Friends and Neighbors, — The National contest is over 
and bj the narrowest of margins we have h:)st. I thank you 
for your call, which if not one of joyous congratulation is one, 
I am sure, of confidence and sanguine hopes for the future. I 
thank you for the public opportunity you give me to express 
my sense of obligation not only to 3'ou but to all the Republi- 
cans of Maine. They responded to my nomination with grati- 
fying enthusiasm and ratified it by a superb vote. I count it 
as one of the honors and pleasures of my public career that the 
party in Maine, after struggling hard for the last six years and 
twice within that period losing the State, has come back in this 
campaign to an old-fashioned twenty thousand plurality. No 
other expression of public confidence and esteem could equal 
that of the people among whom I have lived for thirty years, 
and to whom I am attached by all the ties that ennoble human 
nature, and give joy and dignity to life. After Maine, indeed, 
with Maine, my first thought is always of Pennsylvania. 
How can I fittingly express my thanks for that unparalleled 
majority of more than eighty thousand votes ? — a popular in- 
dorsement which has deeply touched m}^ heart and which has, 
if possible, increased my affection for the grand old Common- 
wealth — an affection which I inherited from my ancestry and 
which I shall transmit to my children. 

But I do not limit my thanks to the State of my residence 
and the State of my birth. I owe much to the true and zealous 
friends in New England who were nobly steadfast to the Re- 
publican part}' and its candidates, and to the eminent scholars 
and divines, who, stepping aside from their ordinary vocations, 



AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIOX OF ISSl. 4G7 

made my cause tlieir cause, and to loyalty to principle, added 
the special compliment of standing as my personal representa- 
tives in the struggle. But the achievements for the Republican 
cause in the East are even surpassed by the splendid victories 
in the West. In that magnificent cordon of States that 
stretches from the foot-hills (.)f the Allcghenies to the Golden 
Gate of the Pacific — beginning with Ohio and ending with 
California — the Republican banner was borne so loftily that 
but a single State failed to join in the wide acclaim of triumph. 
Nor should I do justice to my feelings if I failed to thank 
the Republicans of the Empire State who encountered many 
discouragements and obstacles, who fought against foes from 
within and foes from without, and who waged so strong a battle 
that a change of one vote in every two thousand would have 
given us the victory in the nation. Indeed a change of little 
more than five thousand votes would have transferred New 
York, Indiana, New Jersey, and Connecticut to the Republican 
standard, and have made the North as solid as the South. My 
tlianks would still be incomplete if 1 should fail to recognize 
with special gratitude that great body of workingmen — both 
native and foreign born — who gave me their earnest sup})ort 
— breaking from old personal and party ties and finding in the 
principles which I represented in the canvass the safeguard and 
protection of their own fireside interests. 

The result of the election, my friends, will be regarded in 
the future, I think, as extraordinary. The Northern States, 
leaving out of the count the cities of New York and Brooklyn, 
sustained the Republican cause by a majority of more than 
four hundred thousand — almost half a million indeed — of the 
poi)ular vote. The cities of New York and Brooklyn threw 
their o-reat strength and influence with the solid South, and 
were the decisive element which gave to that section the con- 
trol of the National Government. Speaking now, not as a 
defeated candidate, but simply as a loyal and devoted Ameri- 
can, I think the transfer of the political power of the Govern- 
ment to the South is a great National misfortune. It is a 
misfortune because it introduces an element which cannot 
insure harmony and prosperity to the people, because it intro- 
duces into a Republic the rule of a minority. 



4G8 rOLITICAL DISCUSSTOXS. 

The first instinct of an American is equality — equality of 
right, equality of privilege, equality of political power — that 
equality which says to every citizen, " Your vote is as good, 
and as potential as the vote of any other citizen." That 
cannot be said to-day in the United States. The course of 
affairs in the South has crushed out the political power of more 
than six million American citizens and has transferred it by 
violence to others. Forty-two Presidential electors are assigned 
to the South on account of the colored population, and yet the 
colored population with more than eleven hundred thousand 
loyal votes have been unable to choose a single elector. Even 
in States where they have a decided majority of more than a 
hundred thousand they are deprived of free suffrage, and their 
rights as citizens scornfully trodden under foot. The eleven 
States that comprised the Rebel Confederacy had by the census 
of 1880 seven and a half million white population, and five 
million three hundred thousand colored population. The col- 
ored population almost to a man desire to support the Republi- 
can party, but by a system of reckless intimidation, and by 
violence and murder whenever violence and murder are required, 
they are absolutely deprived of political power. 

If the outrage stopped there it would l)e bad enough. But 
it does not stop there, for not only is the negro population 
disfranchised but the power which rightly and Constitutionally 
belongs to them is transferred to the white population of the 
South, enabling them to exert an electoral influence far beyond 
that exerted by the same number of white peoj)le in the North. 
As an illustration of the extent to which this works destruction 
of all fair elections, let me present to you five States in the late 
Confederacy and five loyal States of the North, possessing in 
each section the same number of electoral votes. In the South 
the States of Louisiana, jNIississippi, Alabama, Georgia and 
South Carolina have, in the aggregate, forty-eight electoral 
votes. They have two million eight hundred thousand white 
jieople and over three million colored people. In the North the 
States of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas and California have 
likewise in the aggregate forty-eight electoral votes, and they 
have a white popidation of five million six hundred thousand, 
or just double that of the five Southern States which I have 



AFTER THE PRESIDEXTIAL ELECTION OF 1884. 469 

named. These Northern States have practically no colored 
population. It is therefore evident that tlie white men in those 
Southern States, by usurping and absorbing the rights of the 
colored men, are exerting just double the political jiower of 
the white men in the Northern States. I submit, my friends, 
that sucli a condition of affairs is extraordinary, unjust, and 
derogatory to the manhood of the North. Even those who are 
vindictively opposed to negro suffrage will not deny that if 
Presidential electors are assigned to the South by reason of the 
negro population, that population ought to be jiermitted free 
suffrage in the election. To deny that clear proposition is to 
affirm that a Southern white man in the Gulf States is entitled 
to double the political power of a Northern white man in the 
Lake States. It is to affirm that a Confederate soldier shall 
wield twice the iniluence in the nation that a Union soldier can 
wield, and that a perpetual ami constantly increasing superiority 
shall be conceded to the Southern white man in the Government 
of the National Union. If that be quietly conceded in this 
generation, it will be hardened into custom, until the badge of 
inferiority will attach to the Northern white man as odiously as 
ever Norman noble stamped it upon Saxon churl. 

This subject is of deep interest to the laboring men of the 
North. With the Southern Democracy triumphant in their 
states and in the Nation, the negro will be compelled to work 
for just such wages as the whites may decree, — wages which 
will amount, as did the supplies of the slaves, to a bare sub- 
sistence, equated in cash, perhaps at thirty-five cents per day, 
over the entire South. The white laborer will soon feel the 
destructive effect of this upon his own wages. The Republican 
party has clearly seen from the earliest days of reconstruction, 
that wages in the South must be raised to a just recompense of 
the laborer, or wages in the North must be ruinously lowered, 
and it has steadily worked for the former result. The reverse 
influence will now be set in motion, and that condition of affairs 
reproduced which, as Mr. Lincoln, years ago, warned the free 
laboring men of the North, will prove hostile to their independ- 
ence, and will inevitably lead to a ruinous reduction of Avages. 
A mere difference in the color of the skin will not suffice to 
maintain an entirely different standard of wages in contiguous 



470 rOLITICAL DISCUSSIOXS. 

States, and tlie voluntary will be compelled to yield to the in- 
voluntary. So completely have the colored men in the South 
been already de])rived by the Democratic party of their Consti- 
tutional and legal rights as citizens of the United States, that 
they regard the advent of that party to national power as the 
signal of their re-enslavement, and are affrighted because they 
think all legal protection for them is gone. 

Few persons in the North realize how completely the chiefs 
of the Rebellion wield the political j)ower which has triumphed 
in the late election. It is a jwrtentous fact that the Democratic 
senators who come from the States of the late Confederacy, all, 
without a single exception, personally participated in the re- 
bellion against the National Government. It is a still more 
significant fact that in those States no man who was loyal to 
the Union, however strong a Democrat he may be to-day, has 
the slightest chance of political promotion. The one great 
avenue to honor in that section is the record of zealous service 
in the war against the Government. It is certainly astounding 
that the section in which friendship for the Union in the day 
of its trial and agony is still a political disqualification, should 
be called now to rule over the Union. All this takes place 
during the lifetime of the generation that fought the war, and 
elevates into practical command of the American Government 
the identical men who organized for its destruction and plunged 
us into the bloodiest contest of modern times. 

I have spoken of the South as placed by the late election in 
possession of the Government. The South furnished nearly 
three-fourths of the electoral votes that defeated the Republican 
party, and they will step to the command of the Democratic 
party as unchallenged and as unrestrained as they held the 
same position for thirty years before the civil war. Gentlemen, 
there cannot be political inequality among the citizens of a Free 
Republic. There cannot be a minority of white men in the 
South ruling a majority of white men in the North. Patriotism, 
self-respect, pride, protection for person, safety for the country, 
all cry out against it. The very thought of it stirs the blood 
of men who inherit equality from the pilgrims who first landed 
on Plymouth rocks, and from liberty-loving patriots who came 
to the Delaware with "William Penn. It becomes the jDrimal 



AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1884. 471 

question of American manhood. It demands a hearing and a 
settlement, and that settlement will vindicate the equality of 
the American citizen in all personal and civil rights. It will at 
least establish the equality of white men under the National 
Government and will give to the Northern man who fought to 
preserve the Union as large a voice in its government as may 
be exercised by the Southern man who fought to destroy the 
Union. 

The contest just closed utterly dwarfs the fortunes of candi- 
dates whether successful or unsuccessful. Purposel}*, I may 
say instinctively, I have discussed the issues and consequences 
of that contest without reference to my own defeat, without 
the remotest reference to the gentleman who is elevated to the 
Presidency. Towards him personally I have no cause for the 
slightest ill will, and with entire cordiality I may express 
the wish that his oflficial career will prove gratifying to himself 
and beneficial to the country, and that his administration may 
overcome the embarrassment Avhich the peculiar source of its 
power imposes upon it from the hour of its birth. 



472 MEMORIAL SERVICES. 



MEMORIAL SERVICES IN HONOR OF GENERAL 
GRANT IN AUGUSTA, MAINE, AUG. 8, 1885. 



[General Ulysses S. Grant, ex-President of the United States, died at Mount 
McGregor, New York, on Thursday, July 23, 1885. His funeral was in the City 
of New Yorli on Saturday, August 8. On the same day and at the same hour 
memorial services Avere held in many places throughout the Union. At the ser- 
vice in Augusta, Maine, Mr. Blaine delivered the following address : — ] 

Public sensibility and personal sorrow over the death of 
General Grant are not confined to one continent. Profound 
admiration for great qualities and still more profound gratitude 
for great services have touched the hearts of the people with 
deep sympathy — increased even to tender emotion by the 
agony of his closing days and the undaunted heroism with 
which he morally conquered a last cruel fate. 

The world in its hero-worship is discriminating and practical, 
if not indeed selfish. Eminent qualities and rare achievements 
do not always insure lasting fame. A brilliant orator attracts 
and enchains his hearers with his inspired and inspiring gift, 
but if his speech be not successfully used to some great, public, 
v/orthy end he passes soon from j^opular recollection, his only 
reward being in the fitful aj^plause of his forgetting audience. 
A victorious general in a war of mere ambition receives the 
cheers of the multitude and the ceremonial honors of his ffov- 
ernment, but if he bring no boon to his country his fame will 
find no abiding-place in the centuries that follow. The hero 
of the ages is he who has been chief and foremost in his day 
in contributing to the moral or material progress, to the gran- 
deur and glory, of the succeeding generations. Washington 
secured the freedom of the Colonies and founded a new Nation. 
Lincoln was the prophet who warned the people of the evils 



MEMORIAL SERVICES. 473 

that were undermining our Government, and the statesman who 
was called to leadership in the work of their extirpation. Grant 
was the soldier who by victory in the field gave vitality and 
force to the civil policies and pliilanthropic measures which 
Lincoln devised in the Cabinet for the regeneration and per- 
petuity of the Republic. 

The monopoly of fame by the few in this world comes from 
an instinct, perhaps from a deep-seated necessity of human 
nature. Heroes cannot be multiplied. The gods of mythology 
lost their sacredness and their power by their numbers. The 
millions pass into oblivion ; only the units survive. Who aided 
the great leader of Israel to conduct the chosen people over the 
sands of the desert and through the waters of the sea, unto 
the Promised Land ? Who marched with Alexander from the 
Bosphorus to Lidia? Who commanded the legions under Cfesar 
in the conquest of Gaul? Who crossed the Atlantic with 
Columbus ? Who ventured through the winter passes of the 
Alps with the Conqueror of Italy ? Who fought with Wellington 
at Waterloo ? Alas ! how soon -it may be asked, Who marched 
with Sherman from the mountain to the sea? Who stood with 
Meade on the victorious field of Gettysburg? Who shared 
with Thomas in the glories of Nashville ? Who went with 
Sheridan through the trials and the triumphs of the blood- 
stained Valley ? 

General Grant's name will survive because it is indissolubly 
connected with the greatest military and moral triumph in 
the history of his country. If the armies of the Union had 
ultimately failed, the vast and beneficent designs of iNIr. Lincoln 
would have been frustrated. He would have been known in 
history as a statesman and philanthropist wlio in the cause of 
humanity cherished great aims which he could not realize, 
conceived great ends which he could not attain ; — as an unsuc- 
cessful ruler whose policies distracted and dissevered his coun- 
try ; while General Grant would have taken his place with that 
long and -always increasing array of able men who are found 
wanting in the supreme hour of trial. 

But a higher power controlled the result. God in his gracious 
mercy had not raised up these men for works which should 
come to naught. In the reverent expression of Mr. Lincoln, 



474 GENERAL U. S. GRANT. 

"no human counsel devised, nor did any mortal liand work out 
these great things." In their accomplishment these Imman 
agents were sustained by more than human power, and through 
them great salvation was wrought for the land. As long there- 
fore as the American Union shall abide, with its blessings of 
Law and Liberty, Grant's name shall be remembered with 
honor ; as long as the slavery of human beings shall be abliorred 
and the freedom of man cherished. Grant's name shall be 
recalled with gratitude ; and in the cycles of the future the 
story of Lincoln's life can never be told without associating 
Grant in the endurhig splendor of his own fame. 

General Grant's military supremacy was honestly earned, 
without factitious praise, without extraneous help. He had no 
influence to urge his promotion, except such as was attracted 
by his own achievements ; lie had no potential friends, except 
those whom his victories won to his support. He rose more 
rapidly than any other military leader in history. In two and 
a half years he was advanced from the command of a single 
regiment to the supreme direction of a million men, divided 
into many great armies and operating over an area as large as 
the empires of Germany and Austria combined. He exhibited 
extraordinary qualities in the field. Bravery among American 
officers is a rule wdiich has happily had few exceptions, but 
as an eminent general said. Grant possessed a quality above 
bravery ; he had an insensibility to danger, apparently an uncon- 
sciousness of fear. 

With this rare quality General Grant combined an evenness 
of judgment, to be depended upon in sunshine and in storm. 
Napoleon said, "The rarest attribute among generals is two 
o'clock in the morning courage." "I mean," he added, "un- 
prepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected 
occasion and which in si)ite of the most unforeseen events 
leaves full freedom of judgment and promptness of decision." 
No better description could be given of the type of courage 
which distinguished General Grant. His constant readiness 
to fight was another quality which, according to the same high 
authority, established his rank as a commander. " Generals," 
said the exile at St. Helena, " are rarely found eager to give 
battle; they choose their positions, consider their combina- 



MEMORIAL SERVICES. 475 

tions, and tlicn indecision begins." "Xotliing," added this 
greatest warrior of modern times, " nothing is so difficult as to 
decide.'' General Grant in his services in the field never once 
exhibited indecision, and it was this quality which gave him 
his crowning characteristic as a military leader ; he inspired his 
men with a sense of their invincibility, and they were thence- 
forth invincible I 

The career of General Grant when he passed from military 
to civil administration was marked by his strong qualities. 
His Presidency of eight years was filled with events of magni- 
tude, in whicli if his judgment was sometimes questioned, 
his patriotism was always conceded. He entered upon his 
office after the angry disturbance caused by the unexpected 
course of Mr. Lincoln's successor, and quietly enforced a policy 
which had been for four years the source of embittered disputa- 
tion. His election to the Presidenc}^ proved in one important 
aspect a landmark in the history of the country. For nearly 
fifty years preceding that event there had been few Presidential 
elections in which the fate of the Union had not in some 
degree been agitated either by the threats of political malcon- 
tents or in the apprehensions of timid patriots. That day and 
that danger had passed. The Union was saved by the victory 
of the army commanded by General Grant. No menace of its 
destruction has been heard since General Grant's victory at the 
l)olls. 

Death holds a flag of truce over its own. Under that flag, 
friend and foe sit peacefully together, passions are stilled, be- 
nevolence is restored, wrongs are repaired, justice is done. It 
was impossilde that a career so long, so prominent, so positive 
as that of General Grant, should not have provoked strife and 
engendered enmity. For more than twenty years — from the 
death of Mr. Lincoln to the close of his own life — General 
Grant was the most conspicuous man in America — one towards 
whom leaders looked for leadership, upon whom partisans built 
their hopes of victory, to whom personal friends by tens of 
thousands offered the incense of sincere devotion. It was 
according to the weakness and the strength of human nature 
that counter-movements should ensue, that General Grant's 
primacy should be challenged, that his i^arty should be resisted, 



476 MEMORIAL SERVICES. 

that his devoted friends should be confronted by jealous men 
in his own ranks, and by bitter enemies in the ranks of his 
opponents. But all these passions, all these resentments are 
buried in the grave which to-day receives his remains. Conten- 
tion over his rank as a commander ceases, as Unionist and 
Confederate alike testify to his prowess in battle and his 
magnanimity in peace. Controversy over his civil Administra- 
tion closes, as Democrat and Republican unite in pronouncing 
him to have been in every act and in every aspiration an 
American patriot. 



THE IRISH QUESTION. 477 



THE IRISH QUESTION. 



[Speech delivered by Mr. Blaine before a public meotins in Portland, Maine, 
June 1, ISSG. The meeting was called to order by His Honor, Charles P. 
Chapman, Mayor of the city, and His Excellency, Frederic Kobie, Governor of 
the State, presided.] 

Your Excellency axd FELLOw-CiTrzEXS, — Directly after 
the pul:>lishe(l notice of this meeting I received a letter from a 
venerable friend in an adjacent county asking me, as I was 
announced to speak, to explain if I could, just what the " Irish 
question" is. I appreciate this request, for on an issue that 
calls forth so much sympathy and so much sentiment among 
those devoted to free government, throughout the world, and 
evokes so much passion among those who are personall}" con- 
cerned in the contest, there may be danger of not giving suffi- 
cient attention to the simple, elementary facts which enter into 
the subject. 

What then is Home Rule ? It is nothincj more and nothinof 
less than that which is enjoyed among us by every State and 
every Territory of the Union. Negatively it is what the people 
of Ireland do not enjoy. In a Parliament of 670 members 
Great Britain has 567 and Ireland has 103. Except with the 
consent of this Parliament, in Avhich the Irish members are 
outnumbered by more than five to one, the people of Ireland 
possess no Legislative power whatever. They cannot incorjjo- 
rate a horse railroad company, or authorize a ferry over a 
stream, or organize a gas company to light the streets of a city. 
Apply that to yourselves. Suppose the State of Maine were 
linked with the State of New York in a joint Legislature in 
which New York had five members to ^Maine's one. Suppose 
you could not take a step for the improvement of your beauti- 
ful city, or this State organize an association of any kind, or 



478 POLITICAL DLSCUSSTOXS. 

adopt any nioasure for its own advancement, unless by the 
permission of tlie overwhelming- majority of the New York 
members ! How long do you think the people of Maine would 
endure such a condition of affairs? Yet that illustrates the 
position wliicli Ireland holds with respect to England, except 
that there is one irritating feature in addition which would not 
apply to New York and Maine; — the centuries of oppression 
which have inspired the people of Ireland with a deep sense of 
wrong on the part of England. 

If the Anglo-Celtic contention were left to the people of the 
United States to adjust, I suppose we should say, — adopt the 
Federal system I Let Ireland have her legislature, let England 
have her legislature, let Scotland have her legislature, let 
Wales have her legislature, and then let the Imperial Parlia- 
ment legislate for the British Empire. Let questions that are 
Irish be settled by Irishmen, questions that are English be set- 
tled by Englishmen, questions that are Welsh be settled by 
Welshmen, and questions that are Scotch be settled by Scotch- 
men. Let questions that aifect the whole Empire of Great 
Britain be settled in a Parliament in which the four gieat con- 
stituent elements shall be impartially represented. That would 
be our direct, shorthand method of settling the question. Lender 
that system we have lived and grown and prospered for more 
than two hundred years in the United States, continually ex- 
panding and continuall}^ strengthening our institutions. 

I do not forget that it would be political empiricism to 
attem[)t to give the details of any measure that Avould settle 
this prolonged strife between Great Britain and Ireland. To 
prescribe definite measures for a British Parliament would be 
a presumption on our part as much as for the English people to 
prescribe definite measures for the American Congress. I have 
noticed so many errors, even among the leading men of Great 
Britain, concerning the Congress of the United States, that I 
have been taught modesty in attempting to criticise the pro- 
cesses and the' specific measures of the British Parliament. I 
well remember that Lord Palmerston on a grave occasion dur- 
insr our Civil war informed the House of Commons that " the 
President of the United States could not of his own power 
declare war ; that it required the assent of the Senate." Every 



THE IRTSII QUESTION. 479 

school-boy in America knows tlii't it is the Congress of the 
United States, both Senate and House, to which the war power 
is given by the Constitution of the Republic, and not to the 
President at all. But Lord Palnierston's error was slight com- 
pared with another whicli is said to have occurred in Parlia- 
ment. A member in an authoritative manner assured the 
House that no law in the United States was valid until it had 
received the assent of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the 
several States ; and a fellow-member corrected him, saying, 
" You are wrong ; the American Congress cannot discuss any 
measure until two-thirds of the Legislatures of the States shall 
have already approved it." Admonished by these and like in- 
stances, I refrain from any discussion of the details of Mr. 
Gladstone's Home Rule bill. It may not be perfect. It may 
not give to Ireland all that she is entitled to. I only know 
that it is a step in the right direction, and that the long- 
oppressed people of Ireland hail it as a great and l)enelicent 
measure of relief. They and their representatives understand 
it ; and more than all Mr. Gladstone understands it. 

On the occasion of Lord John Russell's somewhat famous 
motion in the House of Commons in 184-1 to inquire into the 
condition of Ireland, Mr. Seward said (I mean Lord Macaulay, 
but I am sure that the memory of neither will be injured by 
mistaking one for the other) Lord JNIacaulay said, in one of his 
most eloquent speeches, *•' You admit that 3'ou govern Ireland 
not as you govern England, not as you govern Scotland, but as 
you govern your new conquests in Scinde : not l)y means of 
tlie respect which the people feel for the law, but by means of 
bayonets and artillery and intrenched camjjs." If that Avere 
true in 1841 I am sure I do not exaggerate when I say that the 
long period of forty-two years which lias intervened has served 
to strengthen rather than to diminish the truth of ]\Iacaulay's 
words. And now without in any way denying the facts set 
forth in Macaulay's extraordinary statement, Lord Salisbury 
comes forward with a remedy of an extremely harsh character. 
He says in effect that "the Irish can remain as they are now 
situated, or they can emigrate." But the Irish have been in Ire- 
land as long as Lord Salisbury's ancestors have been in England 
and I presume much longer. His Lordship's lineage is not 



480 POLITICAL DISCUSSIOXS. 

given in Burke's Peerage beyond the illustrious Burleigh of 
Queen Elizabeth's day, and possibly liis remote ancestry may 
have been Danish pirates or peasants in Normandy before the 
Conquest, and centuries after the Irish people were known in 
Ireland. I repeat, therefore. Lord Salisbury's proposition is 
extremely harsh. INIight we not, indeed, with good reason call 
it impudent? Would it transgress courtesy if we called it 
insolent ? Should we violate truth if we called it brutal in its 
cruelty ? We have had occasion in this country to know Lord 
Salisbury too well. He was tlie bitterest foe that the Govern- 
ment of the United States had in the British Parliament during 
our civil war. He coldly advocated the destruction of the 
American Union simply as a measure of increasing the com- 
merce and prosperity of Great Britain. His policy for Ireland 
and his policy towards the United States are essentially alike 
in spirit and in temper. 

Another objection to Mr. Gladstone's policy comes from the 
Presbyterians of Ulster in the form of an appeal to the Pres- 
byterians of the United States against granting the boon of 
Home Rule to Ireland. As a Protestant I de])lore this action. 
I was educated under Presbyterian influences, in a Presb^-te- 
rian college. I have connections with that church by blood 
and affinity that began with my life and shall not cease until 
my life ends. And yet I am free to say that I should be 
ashamed of the Presbyterian Church of America if it re- 
sponded to an appeal which demands that five millions of Irish 
people shall be perpetually deprived of free government because 
of the remote and fanciful danger that a Dublin Parliament 
might interfere with the religious liberty of Presbyterians in 
Ulster. Mr. Chairman, if the Home Rule bill shall pass, the 
Dublin Parliament will assume power with a greater responsi- 
bility to the public opinion of the world, than was ever before 
imposed upon a Legislative body, because if the Dublin Parlia- 
ment is formed it will be formed by reason of the pressure of 
public o})inion from the liberty-loving people of the world. If 
the Irishmen who compose it should take one step against 
perfect liberty of conscience, or against any Protestant form of 
worship, they would fall under a condemnation even greater in 
its intensity than the friendship and s^unpathy which their own 



THE IRISH QUESTION. 481 

sufferings have so widely called forth. But I have not the 
remotest fear that any such result will happen. The Catholics 
and the Presbyterians of Ireland will live and do just as the 
Presbyterians and Catholics of the United States live and do. 
They wall accord perfect liberty of conscience each to the 
other, and will be mutually governed by the greatest of Chris- 
tian virtues, which is charity. 

Mr. Gladstone's policy includes another measure. It pro- 
poses to do something to relieve the Irish from the intolerable 
oppression of absentee landlordism. Let me here quote Lord 
Macaulay again. Speaking of Ireland whose territory is less 
than the territory of the State of Maine, less than thirty-three 
thousand square miles in extent, Lord Macaulay in the same 
speech from which I have already quoted, says, "In natural 
fertility Ireland is superior to any area of equal size in Europe, 
and is far more important to the prosperity, the strength, the 
dignity of the British Empire than all our distant dependen- 
cies together; more important than the Canadas, the West 
Indies, South Africa, Australasia, Ceylon and the vast domin- 
ions of the Moguls." I am sure that if any Irish orator had 
originally made that declaration in America he would have 
been laughed at for Celtic exaggeration and imagination. 

This extraordinary statement from Lord Macaulay led me to 
a practical examination of Ireland's resources. I w^ent at it in a 
direct, farmer-like way, and examined the statistics relating to 
Ireland's production. I gathered all my information from trust- 
w^orthy British authority, and I give you the result of my 
examination, frankly confessing that I was astounded at the 
magnitude of the figures. In the year 1880 Ireland produced 
four million bushels of wheat. But wheat has ceased to be the 
crop of Ireland. She produced eight million bushels of barley. 
But barley is not one of the great crops of Ireland. She pro- 
duced seventy million bushels of oats, a very extraordinary 
yield considering Ireland's small area. The next item I think 
every one will recognize as peculiarly adapted to Ireland; 
of potatoes, she produced one hundred and ten millions of 
bushels — wdthin sixty millions of the whole product of the 
United States for the same year. In turnips and mangels 
together she produced one hundred and eighty-five million 



482 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

bushels — vastly greater in weight than the largest cotton crop 
of the United States. She produced of flax sixty millions of 
pounds, and of cabbage eight hundred and tifty millions of 
pounds. She produced of hay three million eight hundred 
thousand tons. She had on her thousand hills and in her val- 
leys over four million head of cattle, and in the same pasturage 
she had three million five hundred thousand head of sheep. 
She had five hundred and sixty thousand horses, and two hun- 
dred and ten thousand asses and mules. During the year 1880 
she exported to England over seven hundred thousand cattle, 
over seven hundred thousand sheep, and nearly half a million 
swine. Pray remember all these came from a territory not 
quite so large as the State of Maine, and from an area of cul- 
tivation less than twenty millions of acres in extent ! But with 
this magnificent abundance on this fertile land, rivaling the 
richness of the ancient land of Goshen, there are men in want 
of food, and appealing to-day to the charity of the stranger — 
compelled to ask alms through their blood and kindred in 
America. Why should this sad condition occur in a land that 
overflows with plenty, and exports millions of produce to other 
countries ? According to the inspired command of the great 
Lawgiver of Israel, " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that tread- 
eth out the corn," and St. Paul, in quoting this text in his first 
epistle to Timothy, added, " The laborer is worthy of his 
reward." Yet many of the men engaged in producing these 
wonderful harvests are to-day lacking bread. 

Mr. Gladstone believes, and we hope more than half of Great 
Britain believes with him, that the cause of this distress in 
Ireland is to be traced in large part to the absentee ownership 
of the land. Seven hundred and twenty-nine Englishmen own 
half the land in Ireland. Three thousand other men own the 
majority of the other half of the agricultural land of Ireland. 
Counting all the holdings there are but nineteen thousand two 
hundred and eighty-eight owners of land in Ireland, and this in 
a population of more than five million souls. Produce that 
condition of afl^airs in Maine or in all New England and the 
distress here in a few years would be as great as the distress in 
Ireland to-day. Mr. Gladstone, speaking as a statesman and a 
Christian, says that this intolerable wrong must cease, and that 



THE IRISH QUESTION. 483 

the men who till the land in Ireland must be permitted to 
purchase and to hold it. 

But the story is not half told. The tenants and the peasan- 
try of this little island, not so large, mind you, as ]\Iaine, pay a 
rental of sixty-five millions of dollars per annum upon the land. 
Besides this, Ireland pays an imperial tax of thirty-five millions 
of dollars annually, and a local tax of fifteen millions more. 
Thus the enormous sum of one hundred and fifteen millions of 
dollars is annually wrought out of the bone and flesh and spirit 
of the Irish people ! No wonder that under this burden many 
lie crushed and down-trodden. 

I believe the day has dawned for deliverance from these great 
oppressions ; but from the experience of Ireland's past, it is not 
wise to be too sanguine of a speedy result. For one, therefore, 
I shall not be disappointed to see Mr. Gladstone's measures 
defeated in this Parliament. The English members can do it. 
But there is one thing which the English members cannot do. 
They cannot permanently defy the public opinion of the lovers 
of justice and liberty throughout the civilized world. Lord 
Hartington made a very significant admission when in a com- 
plaining tone he accused Mr. Gladstone of having conceded so 
much in his measure that Irishmen would never take less. I 
do not know the day, whether it be tliis year or next year or 
the year after that, or even years beyond, when a final settle- 
ment shall be made ; but I have confidence that if Mr. Glad- 
stone's bills are defeated the settlement will never be made on 
as easy terms for English landlords as the Premier now proposes. 

They complain sometimes in England of such meetings as 
we are now holding. They say we are transcending the 
just and proper duties of a friendly nation. Even if that were 
true, the Englishman who remembers 1862-63-64 should main- 
tain a discreet silence. Yet I freely admit that misconduct 
of Englishmen during our war would by no means justify mis- 
conduct on our part now. I do not refer to that as any pallia- 
tion or as any ground for justification if we were doing wrong. 
I do not adopt the flippant crj- of tit for tat, or the illogical 
taunt of tu quoque. Indeed, there has been notliing done in 
America that is not strictl}' within the lines of justice and 
strictly within the limits of international obligation. Nor is 



484 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

any thing done in the United States with the intention of in- 
juring or with the remotest desire to injure Great Britain. The 
English people themselves are divided, and the American people 
sympatliize with what they believe to be the liberal and just 
side of English opinion. We are no more sympathizing with 
Ireland as against the England of the past than we are sympa- 
thizing with Gladstone against Salisbury in the England of the 
present. Nor must it be forgotten that England herself, appar- 
ently not appreciating her own course towards Ireland, has 
never failed in the last fifty years to extend symi:»ath3^ and 
sometimes the helping-hand to nationalities in Europe strug- 
gling to be freed from the clutch of tyranny. When Hungary 
resisted the rule of Austria, Kossuth was as much a hero in 
England as he was in America. When Lombardy raised the 
standard of revolt against the House of Hapsburg, the British 
Ministry could scarcely be held back from open expression of 
sympathy. When Sicily revolted against the reign of the 
Neapolitan Bourbons, English sympathy was so active that Lord , 
Palmerston was openly accused of permitting guns from AVool- 
wich Arsenal to be smuggled to the Island of Sicily to aid the 
insurrection against King Bomba. 

The American people are therefore justified by the example 
of England, and apart from any consideration except the broad 
one of human fellowship, stand forth as the friends of Ireland 
in her present distress. They do not stand forth as Democrats. 
The}^ do not stand forth as Republicans. They do not stand 
forth as Protestants. They do not stand forth as Catholics. 
But they stand forth as citizens of a Free Republic, sympathiz- 
ing with freedom throughout the world. 

If I had a word of personal advice to give, or if I were in a 
position to give authoritative counsel, it would be this : the 
time is coming that will probably try the patience and the 
self-control of the Irish people more severely than they have 
been tried in any other stage in the progress of their long 
struggle. My advice is that by all means and with every 
personal and moral influence which can be used, all acts of vio- 
lence be suppressed. Irishmen have earned the approving 
opinion of that part of the Christian world which believes in 
free government. Let them have a care that nothing be done 



THE IRISH QUESTION. 485 

to divide this opinion. Let no act of imprudence or rashness or 
personal outrage or public violence produce a re-action. Never 
has a cause been conducted with a clearer head or with better 
judgment in its parliamentary relations than that which lias 
been conducted by Mr. Parnell. I regard it as a very hn-tunate- 
circumstance that Mr. Parnell is a Protestant. It has been the 
singular, and in many respects the happy fortune of Ireland in 
every trouble to be so led that generous-minded men the world 
over might see that it was not sectarian strife, but a struggle 
for freedom and good government. How often has the leader 
in Irish agitation been a Protestant : — Dean Swift, jSIolyneux, 
Robert Emmet, Theobald Wolf Tone, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 
Henry Grattan, and I might add many names to the list. These 
patriots carried the Irish cause high above and beyond all 
considerations of sectarian difference and founded it on "the 
rights of human nature," as Jefierson defined the American 
cause in our own Revolutionary period. Thus led and thus 
guarded the Irish cause must prevail. There has never been 
a contest for liberty by any section of the British Empire 
composed of white men that was not successful in the end, if 
the white men were united. By union the Thirteen Colonies 
gained their independence. By union Canada gained every con- 
cession she wished upon the eve of a revolution, and there is 
nothing to-day which Canada could ask tliis side of absolute 
separation that would not be granted for the asking. 

I have only one more word to say, and that again is a word 
of advice. The men of Irish blood in this country should keep 
this question as it has been kept thus far, out of our own polit- 
ical controversies. They should mark any man as an enemy 
who seeks to use it for personal or for partisan advancement. 
To the sacredness of your cause conducted in this spirit, you 
can in the lofty language of the most eloquent of Irishmen, 
Edmund Burke — "you can attest the retiring generations, you 
can attest the advancing generations, between whom we stand 
as a link in the o-reat chain of eternal order." Conducted in 
that spirit you can justify your cause before earthly tribunals, 
and you can carry it with pure heart and strong faith before 
the judgment seat of God. 



486 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 



POLITICAL ISSUES IN 1886. 



[Speech delivered by Mr. Blaine at a Republican mass meeting held at Sebago 
Lake, Aug. 24, 188G.] 

Fellow-Citizens, — A new Administration of the National 
Government is usnally un vexed in its first year, except by the 
importunities and the disappointments of its own supporters. 
The people at large give small heed, for the time, to public affairs, 
and the discussion of political issues is left as a somewhat per- 
functory task to opposing })artisans in Congress. This season 
of apparent indifference is caused in part by the natural ebb of 
the tide which flowed so high in the preceding national election, 
and in part also by the American instinct of fair play which 
demands that the party freshly installed may have free oppor- 
tunity and full time to lay out its ground and mature its 
measures. This period of popular inaction is thus not only 
advantageous for rest, but it prepares those who are the ulti- 
mate arbiters in all matters of public concern to give patient 
hearing to fair argument when the time arrives for popular 
discussion. 

The approaching election of a governor, of four representa- 
tives to a new Congress, and of a legislature that sliall choose a 
senator ot the United States, revives the interest in political 
topics in Maine, and subjects to inquiry the various issues 
which separate our people into distinct political parties. Have 
the old differences between the Republican and Democratic 
organizations been adjusted, or have they grown more palpable 
and more pronounced? Are the questions, over which the 
Republicans and the Democrats have waged a long contest, 
to be now abandoned? Is litigation in the court of public 
opinion to be discontinued, and a settlement effected by enter- 
ing " neither party " on the People's docket ? Or, on the other 



POLITICAL ISSUES IN 1886. 487 

hand, do the American people just now begin to see with clearer 
vision the aims and intentions, the methods and the measures 
of each party, and are they waking to a new and more earnest 
struggle over policies that are irreconcilable, over measures 
that are inherently and inevitably in conflict ? Let us inquire 
concerning these things in a spirit of candor ! 

It is in the first place especially worthy of observation that 
in the history of industrial questions no party in time of peace 
has ever been more united in support of a policy than is the 
Republican party in support of a Protective Tariff to-day. At 
the late session of Congress a measure known as the Morrison 
Tariff Bill, designed first to weaken and ultimately to destroy the 
Protective policy, was resisted by so compact an organization 
of the Republican members that a single vote from New York 
and two or three votes from Minnesota were all that broke the 
absolute unanimity of the party. This was rendered still more 
striking by the fact that the organs of Republican opinion in 
New York and Minnesota declare that these exceptional votes 
were adverse to the wishes of a large majority of those who 
elected the dissenting members. 

On the other liand, the majority of the Democratic members 
supported the Free Trade side of the question ; but a small 
minority, uniting with the Republicans, found themselves able 
to defeat the measure. Thereupon the Democratic papers 
quite generally throughout the country denounced the recu- 
sants as unfiiithful to the creed of their party, and the journal 
in New York which is said to reflect the views of the National 
Administration, gave formal notice to all Democrats, North 
and South, who lean towards the policy of Protection, that 
they must revise their opinions or leave the party, because 
with their views they can find no sympathy in Democratic 
ranks and no standing-room on Democratic platforms. 

These leading facts indicate that the policy of Protection 
versus Free Trade, is an issue shaped and determined no longer 
by sectional preference — but has become general and National 
— affording a distinct, well-marked line of division between the 
Republican and Democratic parties. I do not recall these facts 
as preparatory to an analytic discussion of the Protective sys- 



488 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

tern, but witli the view of applying them to certain current 
movements and current events. 

The hostility of the Democratic party to Protection has 
entailed u[)on the country a vast loss and has in many ways 
obstructed the progress and development of certain sections. 
Since the financial panic of 1873 and the contemporaneous 
solidification of the Southern vote, the Democratic party has, 
with the exception of a single Congress, held control of the 
House of Representatives. The power to originate revenue 
bills has been exclusively in their hands, and they have used it 
to the confusion, the detriment, in many instances to the de- 
struction of new enterprises throughout the Union. Confi- 
dence once shaken is hard to restore, and the schemes of 
improvement which have been abandoned within the past ten 
years on account of the uncertainty of our revenue laws, con- 
stantly menaced by the Democratic party in Congress, would 
have caused prosperity and happiness in many communities 
that have felt the discouraging influence of dull times. 

The Democratic party is continually referring to the com- 
parative dullness in business, largely developed by their own 
course in Congress, as an argument against the policy of Pro- 
tection. But it is worth while to contrast the condition of the 
country in this year of grace with its condition the year before 
the Republicans succeeded in enacting their first Protective 
Tariff; to contrast the financial condition at the beginning of 
1861 and at the beginning of 1886 of the nine States which 
still do the larger amount of manufacturing for the country, 
and which did nearly all of it a quarter of a century ago — New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the six States of New 
England. In 1861 the country had been for nearly a generation 
under Free Trade, and the amount which the people had accu- 
mulated in their savings banks during that long period was less 
than one hundred and sixty millions of dollars. In the same 
States on the first day of January, 1886, the aggregate amount 
in the savings banks was over one thousand and twenty millions 
of dollars. The difference in the amount of savings in Maine 
for the two periods show that in January, 1861, the people had 
less than a million and a half in bank, while in January, 1886, 
the people had over thirty-six millions in bank. 



POLITICAL ISSUES IN 188G. 489 

During this period it must be remembered that the increase 
of population in the nine States has been about thirty-five per 
cent, while the increase of deposits in savings banks has been 
at the rate of eight hundred per cent. 

It must be remembered that seventy-five per cent of this vast 
sum belongs to the wage-workers. The vast number of deposi- 
tors may be inferred from the fact that in Maine, where the 
aggregate population is less than seven hundred thousand, the 
thirty-six millions of deposits are divided between 110,000 per- 
sons, showing that about one in six of the total population is a 
depositor and that the average to each is about three hundred 
and twenty dollars. 

The figures with which we are dealing have been confined to 
the nine States named, because in 1861 the manufacturing of 
this country was mainly confined to those States. But the 
economic fact that a thousand millions of dollars had been saved 
by the workers within their borders becomes still more signifi- 
cant when we remember that since 1861 the great body of 
Nortli-western States under the inspiring influence of a Protec- 
tive Tariff have in turn developed an enormous aggregation of 
manufacturing industries. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, 
Wisconsin, are no longer devoted to agriculture solely, but 
have a mass of manufacturing industries larger in value than 
all the manufactures in all the States of the Union on the day 
Mr. Lincoln was first inaucrurated. 

Still another comparison may be made even more embarrass- 
ing to the Free Trade doctrinaires. While the American work- 
men in nine States, working under a protective tariff, have over 
a thousand millions of dollars in savings banks, the vastly 
greater mass of workingmen in England, Ireland, Scotland 
and Wales, the whole United Kingdom, all working under free 
trade have less than four hundred millions of dollars in both 
savings banks and postal banks. These figures and these 
dollars are the most persuasive of arguments and the conclu- 
sion they teach is so plain that the running man may read. 

The leading feature in the industrial field of 1885 and 1886 
is the discontent among the men who earn their bread by 
skilled and by unskilled labor. Uneasiness and uncertainty are 



490 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

found on all sides ; there are wise aims among many and among 
not a few there is aimlessness, with its inevitable result of dis- 
appointment and discouragement. The man who could by any 
prescription remove this discontent and at once restore har- 
mony and happiness would be philosopher, patriot and states- 
man. Tlie man who professes to be able to do it will generally 
prove to be a compound of empiricism and ignorance. But in 
the end, perhaps by toilsome paths, with many blunders and 
some wrongs, no one need doubt that sound, just and right- 
eous conclusions will be reached. Perfect freedom to test the 
virtues and secure the advantage of organization, to exert 
strong power through combination, are certainly among the 
common rights of all men under a Republican government. 
Labor associations liave the same sanction and the same rights 
that any form of incorporation may assume — subject, as all 
must be, to the condition that the persons and property of 
others shall be respected. It is well for every citizen of a free 
government to keep before his eyes and in his thoughts the 
honored maxim that " the liberty of one man must always end 
where the rights of another man begin." 

I have no new nostrums to offer for the cure of labor 
troubles. I have no quack remedies to propose. I am a firm 
believer in the efficacy of the Protective Tariff, and I can look 
back with satisfaction to my record in Congress as never 
blotted by a single vote that was not friendly to the interests 
of American Labor. I never promised any thing when I was a 
candidate for a public office, and now as a private citizen I 
have no temptation to flatter any man or state any thing else 
than the simple truth as I see the truth. It is in this spirit 
that I offer some suggestions which seem to me worthy of 
attention under the present aspect of the Labor question. 

In what may be termed the political creed of the various 
Labor organizations I have observed an apparent reluctance to 
recognize some pertinent and, as I think, controlling facts, — 
facts which in a spirit of friendship and candor I beg to point 
out. I read, a few days since, in a creed put forth by an asso- 
ciation of Knights of Labor, in another State, a recital of 
eighteen distinct ends which the}^ desired to secure or main- 
tain by national legislation. Among these there was not the 



POLITICAL ISSUES IN 1886. 491 

slightest mention of a protective tariff. That might have been 
accidental ; or it might have implied a perfect sense of safety 
in regard to the continuance of the tariff; or it might have 
meant that those who proclaimed the creed are indifferent to the 
fate of protection. 

In any event it would be well for the Labor organizations 
diligently to inquire and ascertain how the wages of labor in 
the United States can be kept above the rate of wages in Eng- 
land, Germany and France on the same articles of manu- 
facture without the intervention of protective duties? With 
the present cheap modes of interchange and transportation of 
all commodities, I inquire of these gentlemen how, under the 
rule of fr»ee trade, can wages in the United States be kept 
above the general standard of European wages ? I do not stop 
for the detail of argument, I only desire to lodge the question 
in the minds of the millions of American laborers who have 
it in their power to maintain protection or to inaugurate free 
trade ; who have it in their power to uphold the party of pro- 
tection, or the party of free trade. 

Another portentous fact has been omitted — so far as I have 
observed — from the consideration and judgment of the Labor 
organizations. They seem to have taken little or no heed of 
the existence of a million and a half of able-bodied laborers 
in the South witli dark skins, but with expanding intellect, 
increasing intelligence and growing ambition. While these 
men were slaves, working in the corn and cotton fields, in 
the rice swamps and on the sugar plantations of the South, 
the skilled labor of the Northern States felt no competition 
from them. But since they became freemen there has been a 
great change in the variety and skill of the labor performed by 
colored men in the South. The great mass are, of course, still 
engaged in agricultural work, but thousands and tens of thou- 
sands, and in fact liundreds of thousands, have entered and are 
entering the mechanical and semi-mechanical field. They are 
making pig and bar iron in Tennessee and Alabama. They 
are manufacturing cotton in Georgia and the Carolinas. They 
are brick-layers and plasterers everywhere ; they are carpenters 
and painters ; they are blacksmiths ; they make wagons and 
carts ; they make cigars ; they tan leather and make harness ; 



492 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

the3'^ are firemen and pilots on river boats ; the}'' calk vessels 
in Southern ports ; tlie}^ lay railroad track ; they are switchmen 
and section men on the line, and firemen on locomotives. In 
fact, they are generally entering all the avenues and channels 
of skilled labor. Of course they are underpaid. They receive 
far less than has been paid in years past to Northern mechanics 
for similar work. They are not able to take part in making 
laws for their own protection, and the}'" are consequently and 
inevitably unable to maintain a fair standard of wages or to 
receive a fair proportion of their proper earnings. 

I do not dwell on this subject at length, though it could 
easily be presented in exasperating detail. I mention it only 
to place it before the Labor organizations of the North, with 
this question : Do you suppose that you can permanently main- 
tain in the Northern States one scale of prices when just 
beyond an imaginary line on the south of us a far different 
scale of prices is paid for labor? The colored mechanic of 
the South is not so skillful a workman nor so intelligent a man 
as you are, but if he will lay brick in a new cotton factory in 
South Carolina at half the price you are paid, if he will paint 
and plaster it at the same low rate, he is inevitably building up 
an industry which, if the same rate of wages be maintained 
throughout, will drive you out of business or lead you to the 
gates of his own poverty. 

The situation is therefore plainly demonstrable : — first, if 
the Democratic party shall succeed in what they have been 
annually attempting for twelve years past, destroying the Pro- 
tective Tariff, the artisans of the United States will be thrown 
into direct competition with the highly skilled and miserably 
paid labor of Europe. Second, If the Democratic party shall 
be able to hold control of the Government, the colored laborer 
in the South will remain where the Southern Democrats have 
placed him politically, subject to the will of the white man, 
and unable to fix the price or command the value of his labor. 
The colored man will, therefore, under those conditions remain 
a constant quantity in the labor market, receiving inadequate 
compensation for his own toil, and steadily crowding down the 
compensation of white labor, if not to his own level yet far 
below its just and adequate standard. 



POLITICAL ISSUES IN 1886. 493 

At every turn, therefore, whether it be in exposing the white 
American hiborer to the danger of Enronean competition by 
destroying the Protective Tariff, or whether it be in reducing 
the wages of the white man by unfairly making the colored 
laborer his fatal competitor in all the fields of toil, the Demo- 
cratic party North and South appears as the enemy of every 
interest of the American workman. With that party placed 
in full power and with all its measures achieved, the wages of 
the American laborer will fall as certainly as effect follows 
cause. 

The Fishery dispute between the United States and Great 
Britain has passed through many singular phases in the last 
seventy years but never before, I think, were the circumstances 
of the controversy so extraordinary as we find existing at this 
moment. Before discussing the merits of the American case 
it may be interesting to recall the process by which the ques- 
tion has been placed in its present attitude. 

On the thirty-first day of January, 1885, several months 
before the fishing season of that year began, President Arthur 
notified the people by public proclamation that the fishery 
articles of the Treaty of Washington (1871) had, according 
to the conditions of the treaty, been formally terminated. 
The President made plain and unmistakable the results that 
would flow from this action by warning all citizens of the 
United States that " none of the privileges secured to them by 
these articles will exist after July 1st, 1885." This termination 
of the treaty had been decreed by an overwhelming vote of 
both branches of Congress and was now made final and effec- 
tive by the President's proclamation. This course had been 
earnestly desired by the American fishermen, was fully under- 
stood by them and was completed without protest from a single 
citizen of the United States. 

Five weeks after President Arthur's proclamation was issued, 
his term closed, and with the new Administration Mr. Bayard 
became Secretary of State. In three or four days after he had 
been installed in office the British minister. Honorable Sack- 
ville West, submitted a proposal to continue the reciprocal 
fishing arrangements until Jan. 1, 1886. After a brief corre- 



494 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

spondence Mr. Bayard accepted the offer. In other words, 
Mr. West and Mr. JUiyard made a treaty of tlieir own by which 
American fisliermen were to be allowed to fish in British waters 
six months longer, and British fisliermen should freely fish in 
American waters for the same period. When Mr. West first 
proposed this extension of time, in his note of March 12, he 
based his suggestion solely upon the generous ground that as 
the treaty would terminate during the fishing season " consid- 
erable hardship might be occasioned to American fishermen if 
they were compelled to desist from fishing at that time." This 
exact point had been foreseen, had been carefully considered 
by Congress, by the President, by the State Department, and 
by the American fishermen themselves. In popular parlance, 
they had " discounted it " and were fully prepared for it, when 
to their exceeding surprise the British minister seemed to be 
moved with compassion for tlieir possible sufferings. Appar- 
ently without other motive than disinterested benevolence, 
Mr. West was anxious to allow them six months more of that 
precious time which the Halifax Commission had declared to 
be worth to American fishermen a half million dollars per 
annum. 

But reading a little farther in this remarkable diplomatic cor- 
respondence, we find that Mr. West instead of acting from 
motives of pure generosity towards American fishermen was 
really paving the way for a shrewd trade and a new treaty. 
A formal understanding between himself and Mr. Bayard was 
reduced to writing, showing that he received a large considera- 
tion for leaving the British waters oipen to American fishermen 
six months longer. The coiisideration was a pledge from Mr. 
Bayard under date of June 19, 1885, that the President would 
at the next session of Congress " recommend the appointment 
of a Commission in which the Governments of the United 
States and Great Britain shall be respectively represented, 
charged with the consideration and settlement upon a just, 
equitable and honorable basis of the entire questions of the 
fishing rights of the two Governments and of their respective 
citizens on the coasts of the United States and British North 
America." The stipulation was definite and reduced to writing 
that " in view and in consideration of such promised recommenda- 



POLITICAL ISSUES IN 1886. 495 

tions hy the President'''' the British would for the ensuing six 
months enforce no restrictive regulations against American 
fishermen. In addition to all this, Mr. Bayard gave significant 
intimation to Mr. West that the refunding of duties meanwhile 
collected under our custom laws upon Canadian fish might be 
brought before the Commission thus promised. 

Accordingly, in the following December, six and a half 
months after Mr. Bayard's memorandum pledge that the Presi- 
dent would make the recommendation to Congress, the President 
actually did incorporate it in his annual message and gave 
it in language which was a transcript verbatim of the words 
which Mr. Bayard gave to Mr. West. It would certainly be 
apart from my desire to pass any personal criticism upon the 
President, of whom I wish at all times to speak in terms of 
respect, but viewing this as a public question and speaking 
only with the freedom of a private citizen, I must express my 
belief that tliis transaction was throughout extraordinary and 
unprecedented. It was extraordinary and unprecedented and 
altogether beyond the proper power of a Secretary of State in 
the recess of Congress to revive any part of a treaty which 
Congress had expressly terminated ; it was extraordinary for 
a Secretary of State to begin negotiations for the renewal of a 
treaty which every department of Government had just united 
in annulling ; it was extraordinary for a Secretary of State to 
enter into a trade with a foreign Minister for a present benefit 
to be paid for by the future action of the Government; and 
most of all was it extraordinary that a pledge should be given 
to a foreign Government that the President of the United 
States should in the future — more than a half-year distant — 
make a specific recommendation, on a specific subject, in specific 
words to the Congress of the United States. Tliat pledge was 
given and was held in the British foreign office in London, and 
it took from the President all the power of reconsideration 
which the lapse of time and the change of circumstances might 
suggest and impose. It robbed the President pro liac vice of 
his liberty as an executive. He was no longer free to insert 
in his annual message of December what might then seem ex- 
pedient on the question of the fisheries, but was under personal 
obligations to insert word for word, letter for letter, the exact 



496 rOLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

recommendation which the Secretary of State in the preced- 
ing month of June had promised and pledged to the British 
Ministry. The matter presents a curious speculation in regard 
to the working of our Government. What, for instance, could 
or should the President have done, if before the date of his 
annual message he had become convinced, as a large majority 
of the Senate were convinced, that it was not expedient to 
organize an International Commission on the Fisheries. He 
would then have found himself embarrassed between this pledge 
given to a foreign Government in June and his convictions 
of duty to the citizens of the United States in the ensuing 
December. 

Congress could not be induced to concur in the President's 
recommendation for an International Commission on the Fish- 
eries, and so the scheme for which Mr. Bayard and Mr. West 
had made their extraordinary preparations came to naught. It 
would have been strange indeed if any other result had been 
reached. Congress had for several years been diligently en- 
deavoring to free the country from the burden of the treaty 
provisions respecting the fisheries, and it could not be expected 
that they would willingly initiate measures for a new treaty 
that would probably in the end be filled with provisions as 
odious and burdensome to the American fishing interest as 
those from which they had just escaped. 

As soon as it became evident that Congress would not accept 
the proposal for a new commission, the Government of the 
Dominion of Canada, with the presumed approval of the Im- 
perial Government, began a series of outrages upon American 
fishing-vessels and fishing-crews, — seeking in every way to de- 
stroy their business and to deprive them of their fishing-rights. 
That course continues to this day, and is adopted by the Cana- 
dian Government Avith the deliberate intention and obvious 
expectation of forcing concessions from this Government. A 
few facts in the long controversy over the fishery question may 
be pertinently recalled as bearing on the present situation. 

Let us frankly admit at the outset that we are governed in 
this matter by the terms of the treaty of 1818. Of the injus- 
tice of which this country was made the victim before that 
treaty was ratified, we need not here and now speak. We 



POLITICAL ISSUES IX 1886. 497 

accepted the treaty of 1818 in good faith; and tliongh it hirgely 
curtailed privileges which were the birthright of American 
fishermen, those hardy men w^ent to work under it, and by 
their enterprise largely expanded their business, — increasing 
in an amazing ratio the number of vessels, their aggregate 
tonnage, and the number of men engaged in the hazardous 
calling. This rapid progress alarmed the Canadians, and with 
the view of repressing rivalry and crippling American fisher- 
men, a new construction was applied to the treaty nearly a 
quarter of a century after it had been in peaceful operation. 

From 1841 to 1845 it was for the first time contended by 
Great Britain that the American right to fish within three miles 
from shore, meant three miles from the headlands which marked 
the entrance to bays. On this new and strained construction 
of the treaty, they sought to exclude American fishermen 
even from the Bay of Fundy, which is sixty miles wide at 
its mouth. After a long diplomatic discussion, maintained 
with signal ability by Edward Everett, our Minister at London, 
Lord Aberdeen — a name identified with justice and magna- 
nimity in more than one generation — then at the head of the 
British Foreign Office, acknowledged that the ground taken by 
England in regard to the Bay of Fundy was indefensible, the 
Canadian position was reversed, and the bay was re-opened to 
American fishermen. 

But the design of coercing the United States into opening 
her markets to Canadian fishermen was not abandoned. In 
1852 a fresh and determined series of hostilities was begun 
against American fishermen. A naval force was sent out from 
England, and the whole coast of Nova Scotia was guarded by 
the guns of the Royal Navy — thirteen war-vessels patrolling 
the fishing-grounds. It was again proclaimed that the three- 
mile limit of the treaty of 1818 was not three miles from the 
shore, but three miles outside of a line from headland to head- 
land of bays. This construction of the treaty would place the 
American fishermen in many places thirty miles from shore, 
instead of three, as provided by treaty. Mr. Everett had perti- 
nently reminded the British Government that by this construe^ 
tion " the waters which wash the entire south-eastern coast of 
Nova Scotia from Cape Sable to Cape Causo — a distance of 



498 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

nearly three hundred miles — might constitute a bay from which 
the United States fishermen would be excluded." In other 
words, the argument of Mr. Everett showed that the Britisli 
construction, if admitted, would destroy all American rights 
intended to be guarded and guaranteed under the provisions of 
the treaty. 

When the attempt of 1852 was made to enforce the " head- 
land "' construction of the treaty, Mr. Webster was Secretary of 
State, in the Administration of Mr. Fillmore. In an official 
paper over his own signature, Mr. Webster recorded his opinion 
that the British construction of the treaty "z's not conformable 
to the intentions of the contracting parties.''' Those are weighty 
words, and spoken by Mr. Webster, they give an almost author- 
itative construction to the treaty. It is certainly not discour- 
teous or invidious to say that in legal ability, especially on 
points both of Constitutional and International Law, ]Mr. 
Webster's opinion is entitled to more serious consideration 
than that of any British official who was then dealing or who 
has since dealt with the fishery question. 

Mr. Webster's official proclamation, from which I have quoted, 
was issued on the 6th of July, 1852. A fortnight later he 
addressed a large audience from the front door of his house at 
Marshfield, and then he spoke with entire freedom. " The 
treaty of 1818,'" said Mr. Webster, "was made with the Crown 
of England. If an American fishing-vessel is captured by one 
of her vessels of war, the Crown of England is answerable ; 
but it is not to be expected that the United States will submit 
their rights to be adjudicated in the petty tribunals of the 
Provinces, or that we shall allow our own vessels to be seized 
by constables and other petty officers, and condemned by the 
municipal courts of Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick or 
Canada. ... In the mean time be assured that the fishing in- 
terest will not be neglected by this Administration under any 
circumstances. The fishermen shall be protected in all their 
rights of property and in all their rights of occupation. To 
use a Marblehead phrase, they shall be protected ' hook and 
line, bob and sinker.' " 

Mr. Webster fell ill very soon after these vigorous expressions, 
and the negotiations passed into other hands and were adjusted 



POLITICAL ISSUES IX 1886. 499 

finally by the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. Tlie operation of 
that treaty was higlily injurious to American fishermen. Before 
its termination in 1866, onr Government refused to renew it 
and our fishing interest immediately began to revive, and im- 
mediately the Canadians began to agitate for another treaty 
by which they could reach the markets of the United States. 
Their wishes were gratified, and by the strangest of all diplo- 
matic juggles the United States paid five and a half millions of 
dollars for a treaty wliich it did not want and which the other 
party earnestly desired. Time has passed and the treaty of 
1871 has expired. The Canadians again come back to their old 
tactics of harassing and worrying and outraging American 
fishermen until by sheer weariness, after the manner of the 
unjust judge in Scripture, our Government shall give them 
what they want, even to the injury of our own people. 

The humiliation of our situation has been gratuitously in- 
creased by tlie vote of a majority of the Democratic party in 
the House of Representatives to throw open the markets of the 
United States to British and Canadian fishermen, without duty 
or charge, and without securing to American fishermen the 
right to fish in British and Canadian waters. Tliis is an act of 
hostility to the fishing interest of New England, the motive of 
which it is difficult even to comprehend. John Randolph so 
hated the wool tariff that he "felt like walking a mile to kick a 
sheep." Do Northern Democrats feel so rancorous a hostil- 
ity to the fishermen of New England that they would sacrifice 
a great national interest in order to inflict a blow upon them ? 

It would certainly be refreshing if we could hear Mr. Web- 
ster's words repeated from official sources to-day. It would be 
refreshing if it could once more be asserted with the strength 
and dignity of Webster that "the United States will not sub- 
mit their rights to be adjudicated in the petty tribunals of the 
Provinces," that " American fishermen shall be protected in all 
their rights of property, and in all their rights of occupation." 
Mr. Webster did not expect and did not intend that his posi- 
tion would lead to war. He simply expected that a firm, de- 
cided tone would bring English officials to their senses, and 
make them feel the responsibility and danger of transgressing 
the rights and touching the sensibilities of a proud and power- 



A 



500 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

ful people. Mr. "Webster knew, as those who learned from him 
have since known, that England could even less than the 
United States atibrd to go to war about the fisheries. Mr. 
Webster knew, as these who have learned in his school have 
since known, that England and the United States can never go 
to war except on some point that touches the imperial integrity 
of the one or the other ; and even an offense of that magnitude 
we agreed in 1871 to settle by arbitration and not by gage of 
battle. But the country is weary of hearing in Mr. Webster's 
phrase that Canadian constables are arresting American crews, 
and that Canadian gun-boats are capturing vessels on the high 
seas floating the American flag, — and doing all this on the 
assumption of a treaty power which the United States denies, 
and upon a technical construction put forward a quarter of a 
century after the treaty went into operation, and after it had 
received a peaceful and fair construction. We await the publi- 
cation of Mr. IJayard's correspondence with Great Britain on 
the subject of the seizure of American fishing-vessels with deep 
interest — and with the hope, if not the expectation, that he 
will leave his country in a better position at the close of the 
nefrotiation than he has thus far maintained. 

Another international trouble has increased our sense of 
chagrin and humiliation. In contrast with our patient endur- 
ance of Canadian outrage towards American fishermen, we 
have made an unnecessary and undignified display of insolence 
and bravado towards Mexico. There is no adequate cause for 
tlie demonstration. I do not stop at this point to narrate the 
precise facts attending the imprisonment of Mr. Cutting. I 
know that we cannot without loss of character for honor and 
chivalry begin our negotiations with threats of war. I mahi- 
tain that Avhen the United States agreed to accept arbitration 
as the means of adjusting our grave difliculties with England, 
we came under bonds to the public opinion of the world to 
offer arbitration to any weaker power as the means of settling 
difficulties in all cases where we cannot adjust them by direct 
negotiation. If we are not willing to accept that conclusion, 
we place ourselves in the disreputable attitude of accepting 
arbitration with a strong power, and resorting to force with a 



POLITICAL ISSUES IN 1886. 501 

weak power. I am sure no American citizen of self-respect 
desires to see his country subjected to that degradation. For 
the United States to attack Mexico without giving her an 
opportunity to be heard before an impartial tribunal of arbitra- 
tion would be for a nation of unlimited power to put herself 
to open shame before the world. 

There could not, fellow-citizens, in my judgment, be a more 
deplorable event than a war between the United States and 
any other Republic of America. The United States must be 
regarded as the elder sister in that family of commonwealths. 
Even in the day of our weakness, we gave aid and comfort 
to them in their struggle for independence ; let us not fail 
now to cultivate friendly and intimate relations with them. 
Refraining from war ourselves we shall gain tlie influence that 
will enable us to prevent war among them — so that peace shall 
be assured and perpetual on tliis continent. If I recall any 
part of my own participation in public affairs with special satis- 
faction it is that I endeavored to assemble the American Repub- 
lics in a Peace Congress to the end that war between nations 
on this continent should be made forever impossible. War in 
any direction would be calamity to the United States — but war 
forced on Mexico would be a crime. ' 

The pending contest is marked by the presence of a third 
party, organized as its leaders say, to enforce the prohibition of 
the liquor traffic in Maine. Some singular features charac- 
terize this movement. The Republican party in Maine from 
the day of its organization has been pledged to prohibition — 
enacting in 1857-58 the principal statute now in force, and 
amending it from year to year as leading temperance men 
requested. The amendments have averaged nearly one for 
every year since the original law was passed. 

The third party, in their convention, testify that prohibition 
has been so well enforced by the Republicans, that in their 
judgment Maine is a quarter of a century ahead of the license 
States in all. that pertains to the temperance reform. The 
Republicans have this year with special emphasis in their State 
Convention re-affirmed their faith in prohibition and nomi- 
nated for Governor a jjronounced supporter of the law. But 



502 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 

uU this does not suit the Tliird Party Prohibitionists. They 
desire a party of their own just small enough to have no effect 
at all, or, if possible, just large enough to throw the State into 
tlie hands of the Democratic party, which has been as constant 
in its hostility to prohibition as the Republican party of Maine 
has been constant in its fidelity to prohibition. 

The i)Osition and platform of the third party might in fact be 
thus abbreviated : Whereas the Republican party of ]Maine en- 
acted a prohibitory law thirty years ago and has since amended 
it as a majority of the friends of temperance demanded, and has 
in consequence advanced Maine in all matters of temperance a 
quarter of a century ahead of the license States ; therefore, be 
it resolved that we, members of a third party of Prohibitionists, 
will so vote as to defeat the Republican party and turn the 
Government of Maine over to the Democrats, who have opposed 
prohibition by every instrumentality in their power. 

Democrats of course, with scarcely an attempt at conceal- 
ment, regard the third party as their especial ally, and the coali- 
tion is so evident that I am sure no man can be deceived in 
regard to the result except him who desires to be deceived. 
Every voter knows that he must choose between the Republi- 
can and Democratic parties — and every voter knows that in 
joining the third party he indirectly but effectually throws his 
political and moral influence in favor of the Democracy. 

The supporters of the third party adopt as their shibboleth 
that '^the Republican party must be killed," and they have 
secured the co-operation of the Democrat, of the Free-Trader, of 
the saloon proprietor, of all men who wish to keep six millions 
of colored people in the South disfranchised and oppressed. It 
is an insincere coalition, an unhallowed partnership, an unholy 
alliance. Against it the Republican party of Maine presents its 
uiuform support of prohibition, its unbroken record of devotion 
to the protection of American la1)or, its steadfast effort in be- 
half of those who are down-trodden and deprived of natural 
rights. The Republican party has always fought its battles 
single-handed, against great odds, and now with principle un- 
tarnished and courage undaunted it will again triumph over 
the combined force of all its foes. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 503 



jr/ 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 



For the second time in this generation the great departments 
of the Government of the United States are assembled in the 
Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a mur- 
dered President. Lincoln fell at the close of a mighty struggle 
in which the passions of men had been deeply stirred. The 
tragical termination of his great life added but another to the 
lengthened succession of horrors which had marked so many 
lintels with the blood of the first-born. Garfield was slain in a 
day of peace, when brother had been reconciled to brother, and 
when anger and hate had been banished from the land. " Who- 
ever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show 
it as it has been exhibited where such example was last to have 
been looked for, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, 
the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate. 
Let him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon ; 
not so much an example of human nature in its depravity and 
in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal being, a fiend in the 
ordinary display and development of his character." 



From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth till the up- 
rising against Charles I., about twenty thousand emigrants 
came from Old England to New England. As they came in 
pursuit of intellectual freedom and ecclesiastical independence 
rather than for worldly honor and profit, the emigration natu- 
rally ceased when the contest for religious liberty began in ear- 
nest at home. The man who struck his most effective blow for 
freedom of conscience by sailing for the' Colonies in 1620 would 
have been accounted a deserter if he had left after 1640. The 



50-t JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

opportunity had then come on the soil of EngLand for that 
great contest which established the authority of Parliament, 
gave religious freedom to the people, sent Charles to the block, 
and committed to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the supreme 
executive power of England. The emigration was never re- 
newed, and from these twenty thousand men, and from a small 
emigration from Scotland, from Ireland, and from France, are 
descended the vast numbers who have New England blood in 
their veins. 

In 1685 the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. 
scattered to other countries four hundred thousand Protestants, 
who were among the most intelligent and enterprising of 
French subjects — merchants of capital, skilled manufacturers, 
and handicraftsmen, superior at the time to all others in 
Europe. A considerable number of these Huguenot French 
came to America ; a few landed in New England and became 
prominent in its history. Their names have in large part 
become anglicized, or have disappeared, but their blood is 
traceable in many of the most reputable families, and their fame 
is perpetuated in honorable memorials and useful institutions. 

From these two sources, the Puritan and the Huguenot, 
came the late President — his father, Abram Garfield, being de- 
scended from the one, his mother, Eliza Ballon, from the other. 
It was good stock on both sides — none better, none braver, 
none truer. There was in it an inheritance of courage, of man- 
liness, of imperishable love of liberty, of undying adherence to 
principle. Garfield was proud of his blood ; and, with as much 
satisfaction as if he were a British nobleman reading his stately 
ancestral record in Burke's Peerage, he spoke of himself as 
ninth in descent from those who would not endure the oppres- 
sion of the Stuarts, and seventh in descent from the brave 
French Protestants who refused to submit to tyranny even 
from Louis the Great. 

General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits, and, dur- 
ing his only visit to England, he busied himself in searching 
out every trace of his forefathers in parish registries and on 
ancient army rolls. Sitting with a friend in the gallery of the 
House of Commons, one night, after a long day's labor in this 
field of research, he said, with evident elation, that in every 




<2#^ 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 505 

war in which for three centuries patriots of English blood had 
struck sturdy blows for constitutional government and human 
liberty, his family had been represented. They were at Marston 
Moor, at Naseby, and at Preston ; they were at Bunker Hill, at 
Saratoga, and at Monmouth ; and in his own person had battled 
for tlie same great cause in the war which preserved the Union 
of the States. 

His father dying before he was two years old, Garfield's 
early life was one of privation, but its poverty has been made 
indelicately and unjustly prominent. Thousands of readers 
have imagined him as the ragged, starving child, Avhose reality 
too often greets the eye in the squalid sections of our large 
cities. General Garfield's infancy and youth had none of this 
destitution, none of these pitiful features appealing to the 
tender heart, and to the open hand of charity. lie was a poor 
boy in the same sense in which Henry Clay was a poor boy ; 
in which Andrew Jackson was a j^oor boy ; in which Daniel 
Webster was a poor boy ; in the sense in which a large majority 
of the eminent men of America in all generations have been 
poor boys. Before a great multitude, in a public speech, Mr. 
Webster bore this testimony: — 

" It did not happen to me to be liorn in a log cabin, but my elder brothers 
and sisters were born in a log cabin raised amid the snow-drifts of New 
Hanipsliire, at a period so early that when the smoke rose first from its I'ude 
chimney and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a 
white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of 
Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my 
children to it to teach them the hardships endured by the generations which 
have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the 
kindred ties, the early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents 
which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode." 

With the requisite change of scene the same words would 
aptly portray the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the 
frontier, where all are engaged in a common struggle and where 
a common sympath}^ and hearty co-operation lighten the bur- 
dens of each, is a very different poverty, different in kind, dif- 
ferent in influence and effect, from that conscious and humiliat- 
ing indigence which is every day forced to contrast itself with 
neighboring wealth on which it feels a sense of grinding de^oend- 



506 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

ence. The poverty of the frontier is indeed no poverty. It 
is but the beginning of wealth, and the boundless possibilities 
of the future are always opening before it. No man ever grew 
up in the agricultural regions of the West, where a house-rais- 
ing, or even a corn-husking, is matter of common interest and 
helpfulness, with any other feeling than that of broad-minded, 
generous independence. This honorable independence marked 
the youth of Garfield, as it marks the youth of millions of the 
best blood and brain now training for the future citizenship 
and future government of the Republic. He was born heir to 
land, to the title of freeholder, which has been the patent and 
passport of self-respect with the Anglo-Saxon race ever since 
Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores of Enghind. Plis ad- 
venture on the canal — an alternative between that and the 
deck of a Lake Erie schooner — was a farmer boy's device for 
earning money, just as the New England lad begins a possibly 
great career by sailing before the mast on a coasting vessel, or 
on a merchantman bound to the farther India or to the China 
seas. 

No manly man feels any thing of shame in looking back to 
early struggles with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a 
worthier pride than when he has conquered the obstacles to his 
progress. But no one of noble mould desires to be looked upon 
as having occupied a menial position, as having been repressed 
by a feeling of inferiority, or as having suffered the evils of 
poverty until relief was found at the hand of charity. Gen- 
eral Garfield's youth presented no hardships which family love 
and family energy did not overcome, subjected him to no priva- 
tions which he did not cheerfully accejot, and left no memories 
save those which were recalled with delight, and transmitted 
witli profit and with pride. 

His early opportunities for securing an education were ex- 
tremely limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an 
nitense desire to learn. He could read at three years of age, 
and each winter he had the advantage of the district school. 
He read all the books to be found within the circle of his ac- 
quaintance ; some of them he learned by heart. While yet in 
childhood he was a constant student of the Bible, and became 
familiar with its literature. The dignity and earnestness of 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 507 

liis speech in mature life gave evidence of this early training. 
At eighteen years of age he was able to teach school, and 
thenceforward his ambition was to obtain a college education. 
To tliis end he bent all his efforts, working in the harvest field, 
at the carpenter's bench, and, in the winter season, teaching the 
common schools of the neighborhood. While thus laboriously 
occupied he found time to prosecute his studies, and was so 
successful that at twenty-two years of age he was able to enter 
the junior class at Williams College, then under the Presidency 
of the venerable and honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the full- 
ness of his powers, survives the eminent pupil to whom he was 
of inestimable service. 

The history of Garfield's life to this period presents no novel 
features. He had undoubtedly shown perseverance, self-reli- 
ance, self-sacrifice and ambition —qualities which, be it said for 
the honor of our country, are everywhere to be found among the 
young men of America. But from his graduation at Williams 
onward, to the hour of his tragical death, his career Avas emi- 
nent and exceptional. Slowly working through his educational 
period, receiving his diploma when twenty-four years of age, he 
seemed at one bound to spring into conspicuous and brilliant 
success. Within six years he was successively President of a 
College, State Senator of Ohio, Major-General of the Army of 
the United States, and Representative-elect to the National Con- 
gress. A combination of honors so varied, so elevated, within 
a period so brief and to a man so young, is without parallel in 
the history of the country. 

His army life was begun with no other military knowledge 
than such as lie had hastily gained from books in the few 
months preceding his march to the field. Stepping from civil 
life to the head of a regiment, the first order he received when 
ready to cross the Ohio was to assume command of a brigade, 
and to operate as an independent force in Eastern Kentucky. 
His immediate duty was to check the advance of Humphrey 
Marshall, who was marching down the Big Sandy with the 
intention of occupying, in connection Avith other Confederate 
forces, the entire territory of Kentucky, and of precipitating 
the State into secession. This was at the close of the year 1861. 
Seldom, if ever, has a young college professor been thrown into 



508 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

a more embarrassing and discouraging position. He knew just 
enougli of military science, as he expressed it himself, to meas- 
ure the extent of his ignorance, and with a handful of men he 
was marching, in rough winter weather, into a strange country, 
among a hostile population, to confront a largely superior force 
under the command of a distinguished graduate of West Point, 
who had seen active and important service in two preceding 
wars. 

The result of the campaign is matter of history. The skill, 
the endurance, the extraordinary energy shown by Garfield, the 
courage he imparted to his men, raw and untried as himself, 
the measures he adopted to increase his force and to create in 
the enemy's mind exaggerated estimates of his numbers, bore 
perfect fruit in the rout of Marshall, the capture of his camp, 
the dispersion of his force, and the emancipation of an im- 
portant territory from the control of the rebellion. Coming 
at the close of a long series of disasters to the Union arms, 
this victory had an unusual and extraneous importance, and 
in the popular judgment elevated the young commander to the 
rank of a military hero. With less than two thousand men 
in his entire command, with a mobilized force of only eleven 
hundred, Avithout cannon, he had met an army of five thousand 
and defeated them — driving ^Marshall's forces successively from 
two strongholds of their own selection, fortified with abundant 
artillery. Major-General Buell, commanding the Department 
of the Ohio, an experienced and able soldier of the regular 
army, published an order of thanks and congratulation on tlie 
brilliant result of the Big Sandy campaign, which would have 
turned the head of a less cool and sensible man than Garfield. 
Buell declared that his services had called into action the high- 
est qualities of a soldier, and President Lincoln supplemented 
these words of praise by the more substantial reward of a 
Brigadier-General's commission, to bear date from the day of 
his decisive victory over Marshall. 

The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its 
brilliant beginning. With his new commission he was assigned 
to the command of a brigade in tlie Army of the Ohio, and 
took part in the second and decisive day's fight on the bloody 
field of Shiloh. The remainder of the year 1862 was not 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 509 

especially eventful to him, as it was not to the armies with 
which he was serving. His practical sense was called into 
exercise in completing the task, assigned him by General Buell, 
of reconstructing bridges and re-establishing lines of railway 
communication for the Army. His occupation in this useful 
but not brilliant field was varied by service on courts-martial of 
importance, in which department of duty he won a valuable 
reputation, attracting the notice and securing the approval of 
the able and eminent Judge Advocate General of the Army. 
This of itself was warrant to honorable fame ; for among the 
great men who in those trying days gave themselves, with entire 
devotion, to the service of their country, one who brought to 
that service the ripest learning, the most fervid elo(iuence, the 
most varied attainments, who labored with modesty and shunned 
applause, who in the day of triumph sat reserved and silent and 
grateful — as Francis Deak in the hour of Hungary's deliver- 
ance was Joseph Holt of Kentucky, who in his honorable 

retirement enjoys the respect and veneration of all who love 
the Union of the States. 

Early in 1803 Garfield was assigned to the highly important 
and responsible post of Chief of Staff to General Rosecrans, 
then at the head of the Army of the Cumberland. Perhaps in 
a great military campaign no subordinate officer requires 
sounder judgment and quicker knowledge of men than the 
Chief of Staff to the Commanding General. An indiscreet man 
in such a position can sow more discord, breed more jealousy 
and disseminate more strife than any other officer in the entire 
organization. When General Garfield assumed his new duties 
he found various troubles already well developed and seriously 
affecting the value and efficiency of the Army of the Cumber- 
land. The energy, the impartiality, and the tact with which 
he sought to allay these dissensions, and to discharge the duties 
of his new and trying position, Avill always remain one of the 
most striking proofs of his great versatility. His military 
duties closed on the memorable field of Chickamauga, a field 
which, however disastrous to the Union arms, gave to him the 
occasion of winning imperishable laurels. The very rare dis- 
tinction was accorded him of a great promotion for bravery on 
a field that was lost. President Lincoln appointed him a Major- 



510 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

General in the Army of the United States for gallant and meri- 
torious conduct in the battle of Chickamauga. 

The Army of the Cumberland was re-organized under the 
command of General Thomas, who promptly offered Garfield 
one of its divisions. He was extremely desirous to accept the 
position, but was embarrassed by the fact that he had, a year 
before, been elected to Congress, and the time when he must 
take liis seat was drawing near. He preferred to remain in 
the military service, and had within his own breast the largest 
confidence of success in the wider field which his new rank 
opened to him. Balancing the arguments on the one side and 
the other, anxious to determine what was for the best, desirous 
above all things to do his patriotic duty, he was decisively 
influenced by the advice of President Lincoln and Secretary 
Stanton, both of whom assured him that he could, at that time, 
be of especial value in the House of Representatives. He re- 
signed his commission of Major-General on the fifth day of 
December, 1863, and took his seat in the House of Representa- 
tives on the seventh. He had served two years and four months 
in the Army, and had just completed his thirty-second year. 

The Thirty-eighth Congress is pre-eminently entitled in his- 
tory to the designation of the War Congress. It was elected 
while the war was flagrant, and every member was chosen upon 
the issues involved in the continuance of the struggle. The 
Thirty-seventh Congress had, indeed, legislated to a large ex- 
tent on war measures, but it was chosen before any one believed 
that secession of the States would be actually attempted. The 
magnitude of the work which fell upon its successor was un- 
precedented, both in respect to the vast sums of money raised 
for the support of the Army and Navy, and of the new and 
extraordinary powers of legislation which it was forced to ex- 
ercise. Only twenty-four States were represented, and one 
hundred and eighty-two members were upon its roll. Among 
these were many distinguished party-leaders on both sides, 
veterans in the puljlic service, with established reputations for 
ability, and with that skill which comes only from parliamen- 
tary experience. Into this assemblage of men Garfield en- 
tered without special preparation, and, it might almost be said, 
unexpectedly. The question of taking command of a division 



]\rE:\roRTAL address. 511 

■» 

of troops under General Thomas, or taking liis seat in Congress, 
was kept open till the last moment, so late, indeed, that the 
resignation of Iiis military commission and his appearance in 
the House were almost contemporaneous. He wore the uni- 
form of a Major-General of the United States Army on Satur- 
day, and on Monday, in civilian's dress, he answered to the 
roll-call as a Representative in Congress from the State of Ohio. 
He was especially fortunate in the constituency which elected 
him. Descended almost entirely from New England stock, 
the men of the Ashtabula district were intensely radical on all 
questions relating to human rights. Well educated, thrifty, 
thoroughly intelligent in affairs, acutely discerning of character, 
not quick to bestow confidence, and slow to withdraw it, they 
were at once the most helpful and most exacting of supporters. 
Tlieir tenacious trust in men in whom they have once confided 
is illustrated by the unparalleled fact that Elisha Whittlesey, 
Joshua R. Giddings, and James A. Garfield represented the 
district for fifty-four years. 

There is no test of a man's ability in any department of 
public life more severe than service in the House of Represen- 
tatives ; there is no place where so little deference is paid to 
reputation previously acquired, or to eminence won outside ; 
no place where so little consideration is shown for the feelings 
or the failures of beginners. What a man gains in the House 
he gains by sheer force of his own character, and if he loses 
and falls back he must expect no mercy, and will receive no 
sympathy. It is a field in which the survival of the strongest 
is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can deceive and 
no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth 
is impartially weighed, his rank is irreversibly decreed. 

With possibly a single exception, Garfield was the youngest 
member in the House when he entered, and was but seven 
years from his college graduation. But he had not been in his 
seat sixty days before his ability was recognized and his place 
conceded. He stepped to the front with the confidence of one 
who bv4onged there. The House contained an unusual number 
of strong men of both parties; nineteen of them have since 
been transferred to the Senate ; many of them have served with 
distinction in the gubernatorial chairs of their respective States, 



512 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

and on foreign missions of great consequence. But among 
them all none grew so rapidly, none so firmly, as Garfiekl. As 
is said by Trevelyan of Lis Parliamentary hero, Garfield suc- 
ceeded "because all the world in concert could not have kept 
liim in the background, and because when once in the front he 
played liis part with a prompt intrepidity and a commanding 
ease that were but the outward symptoms of the immense 
reserves of energy on which it was in his power to draw." 
Indeed, the apparently reserved force which he possessed was 
one of his great characteristics. He never did so well but that 
it seemed he could easily have done better. He never ex- 
pended so much strength but that he appeared to be liohling 
additional power at command. This is one of the liappiest 
and rarest distinctions of an effective debater, and often counts 
for as much, in persuading an assembly, as the eloquent and 
elaborate argument. 

The great measure of Garfield's fame was filled Ijv his ser- 
vice in the House of Representatives. His military life, illus- 
trated by honorable performance, and rich in promise, was, as 
he himself felt, prematurely terminated, and necessarily incom- 
plete. Speculation as to what he might have done in a field 
where the great prizes are so few, cannot be profitable. It is 
sufficient to say that as a soldier he did his duty bravely ; he 
did it intelligently ; he won an envialjle fame, and he retired 
from the service without blot or breath against him. As a 
lawyer, though admirably equipped for the profession, he can 
scarcely be said to have entered on its practice. The few efforts 
he made at the bar were distinguished by the same high order 
of ability which he exhibited on everj^ field where he was put 
to the test; and, if a man may be accepted as a competent 
judge of his own capacities and adaptations, the law was the 
profession to Avhich Garfield should have devoted himself. 
But fate ordained otherwise, and his reputation in history will 
rest largely upon his service in the House of Representatives. 
That service was exceptionally long. He was nine times con- 
secutively chosen to the House, an honor enjoyed probably by 
not twenty other Representatives of the more than five thou- 
sand who have been elected from the organization of the 
Government to this hour. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 513 

As a parliamentar}^ orator, as a debater on an issue squarely 
joined, where the position had been chosen and the ground hiid 
out, Garfield must be assigned a very high rank. More, per- 
liaps, than any man with whom he was associated in public life, 
he gave careful and systematic study to public questions, and 
he came to every discussion in which he took part, with elabo- 
rate and complete preparation. He was a steady and indefati- 
gable worker. Those who imagine tliat talent or genius can 
supply the place or achieve the results of labor Mill find no 
encouragement in Garfield's life. In preliminary work he 
was apt, rapid, and skillful. He possessed in a high degree the 
power of readily absorbing ideas and facts, and, like Dr. John- 
son, had the art of getting from a book all that was of value 
in it by a reading apparently so quick and cursory that it 
seemed like a mere glance at the table of contents. He was a 
pre-eminently fair and candid man in debate, took no petty 
a'lvantage, stooped to no unworthy methods, avoided personal 
allusions, rarely appealed to j)rejudicc, did not seek to inflame 
passion. He had a quicker eye for the strong point of his 
adversary than for his Aveak point, and on his own side he so 
marshaled his weighty arguments as to make his hearers forget 
any possible lack in the complete strength of his position. He 
liad a habit of stating his opponent's side with such amplitude 
of fairness and such liberality of concession that his followers 
often complained that he was giving his case away. But never 
in his prolonged participation in the proceedings of the House 
did he give his case aAvay, or fail in the judgment of competent 
and impartial listeners to gain the mastery. 

These characteristics, which marked Garfield as a great de- 
bater, did not, however, make him a great parliamentary leader. 
A parliamentary leader, as that term is understood wherever 
free representative government exists, is necessarily and very 
strictly the organ of his party. An ardent American defined 
the instinctive warmth of patriotism when he offered the toast, 
" Our country, always right ; but right or wrong, our country." 
The parliamentary leader who has a body of followers that will 
d(j and dare and die for the cause, is one who believes his party 
always right, but right or wrong, is for his party. No more 
important or exacting duty devolves upon him than the selec- 



514 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

tion of the field and the time for contest. He must know not 
merely how to strike, but where to strike and when to strike. 
He often skillfully avoids the strength of liis opponent's posi- 
tion and scatters confusion in his ranks by attacking an exposed 
point when really the righteousness of the cause and the 
strength of logical intrenchment are agamst him. He con- 
quers often both against the right and the heavy battalions; 
as when young Charles Fox, in the days of his Toryism, carried 
the House of Commons against justice, against its immemorial 
rights, against his own convictions, if, indeed, at that i)ori()d 
Fox had convictions, and, in the interest of a corrupt adminis- 
tration, in obedience to a tyrannical sovereign, drove Wilkes 
from the seat to which the electors of Middlesex had chosen 
him, and installed Luttrell, in defiance not merely of law but 
of public decency. For an achievement of that kind Gar- 
field was disqualified — disijualitied by the texture of his 
mind, by the honesty of his heart, by his conscience, and by 
every instinct and aspiration of his nature. 

The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders liitherto 
developed in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. 
Thaddeus Stevens. They were all men of consummate ability, 
of great earnestness, of intense personality, differing witlely 
each from the others, and yet with a signal trait in eoinmon — 
the power to command. In the give-and-take of daily discus- 
sion, in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and 
refractory followers, in the skill to overcome all forms of oppo- 
sition, and to meet with competency and courage the varying 
phases of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it 
would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our 
Congressional history. But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. 
It would, perhai)s, be impt)ssible to find in the parliamentary 
annals of the world a jnirallcl to ]\Ir. Clay, in 1841, when at 
sixty-four years of age he took the control of tlif Whig party 
from the President who had received their suffrages, against the 
power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of 
Choate in the Senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb 
Cushing and Henry A. Wise in the House. In unshared leader- 
ship, in the pride and plenitude of power, he hurled against 
John Tyler with deepest scorn the mass of that conquering 



me:\iorial address. 515 

column wliich had swept over tlic land in 1840, and drove his 
administration to seek shelter behind the lines of its political 
foes. Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less notable 
when, in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong administra- 
tion, against the wise counsel of the older chiefs, against the 
conservative instincts and even the moral sense of the country, 
he forced a reluctant Congress to ve\)eii\ the ]Missouri Com- 
promise. ^Ir. Thaddeus Stevens in liis contests from 18G5 
to 1868 actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until 
Congress tied the hands of the President and governed the 
country by its own will, leaving only ])erfunctory duties to be 
discharged by tlie Executive. With two hundred millions of 
patronage in liis hands at the opening of the contest, aided by 
the active force of Seward in the Cabinet and the inoral power 
of Chase on the bench, Andrew Johnson could not command 
the su[)[)ort of one-third in either House against the iDarliamen- 
tary uprising of which Thaddeus Stevens was the animating 
s})irit and the unquestioned leader. 

l''rom these three great men (iarfiehl differed radically, dif- 
fered in the quality of his mind, in temperament, in the form 
and ])hase of ambition. He could not do what tliey did, but he 
could do what they could not, and in the breadth of his Con- 
gressional work he left that which will longer exert a potential 
infhicnce among men, and which, measured by the severe test 
of posthumous criticism, will secure a moie enduring and more 
envialjle fame. 

■ Those unfamiliar with Garfield's industry, and ignorant of 
the details of his Avork, may, in some degree, measure them by 
the aiuials of Congress. No one of the generation of public 
men to which he belonged has contril)uted so much that will 
prove valuable for future reference. His sjieeches are numerous, 
many of them brilliant, all of them well studied, carefully 
phrased, and exhaustive of the subject under consideration. 
Collected from the scattered pages of ninety royal octavo vol- 
umes of Congressional record, they would present an invaluable 
compendium of the political events of the most important era 
throuo-h which the National Government has ever passed. 
Wlien the history of this period shall be impartially written, 
when war legislation, measures of recons^ nctiou, protection of 



516 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

human rights, amendments to the Constitution, maintenance of 
public credit, steps toward specie resumption, true theories 
of revenue, may all be reviewed, unsurrounded by prejudice 
and disconnected from partisanship, the speeches of Garfield will 
be estimated at their true value, and will be found to comprise a 
vast magazine of fact and argument, of clear analysis and sound 
conclusion. Indeed, if no other authority Avere accessible, his 
speeches in the House of Representatives from December, 1863, 
to June, 1880, would give a well-connected history and complete 
defense of the important legislation of the seventeen eventful 
years that constitute his parliamentary li^e. Far beyond that, 
his speeches would be found to forecast many great measures 
yet to be completed — measures which he knew were beyond 
the public opinion of the hour, but which he confidently be- 
lieved would secure popular approval within the period of his 
own lifetime and by the aid of his own efforts. 

Differing, as Garfield does, from the brilliant parliamentary 
leaders, it is not easy to find his counterpart auywhere in the 
record of American public life. He, perhaps, more nearly re- 
sembles Mr. Seward in liis supreme faith in the all-conquering 
power of a prhiciple. He had the love of learning, and the 
patient industry of investigation, to which John Quincy Adams 
owes his prominence and his Presidency. He had some of those 
ponderous elements of mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, 
and which, indeed, in all our public life have left the great 
Massachusetts Senator without an intellectual peer. 

In English parliamentary history, as in our own, the leaders 
in the House of Commons present points of essential difference 
from Garfield. But some of his methods recall the best fea- 
tures in the strong, independent course of Sir Robert Peel, to 
whom he had striking resemblances in the type of his mind' 
and in the habit of his speech. He had all of Burke's love for 
the Sublime and the Beautiful, with, possibly, something of his 
superabundance. In his faith and his magnanimity, in his power 
of statement, in his subtle analysis, in his faultless logic, in his 
love of literature, in his wealth and world of illustration, one is 
reminded of that great English statesman of to-day, who, con- 
fronted with obstacles that would daunt any but the dauntless, 
reviled as bitterly by those whom he would relieve as by those 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 517 

whose supposed rights he is forced to invade, still labors with 
serene courage for the amelioration of Ireland and for the honor 
of the English name. 

Garfield's nomination to the Presidency, while not antici- 
pated, was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in 
Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened 
by his then recent election as Senator, kept him before the 
public as a man occupying the highest rank among those en- 
titled to be called statesmen. It was not mere chance that 
brought him this high honor. "We must," sa3"s Mr. Emerson, 
"reckon success a constitutional trait. If Eric is in robust 
health and has slept well and is at the top of his condition, and 
thirty j^ears old at his departure from Greenland, he will steer 
west and his ships will reach Newfoundland. But take Eric out 
and put in a stronger and bolder man, and the ships will sail six 
hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles farther and reach 
Labrador and New England. There is no chance in results." 

As a candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. 
He wa)S met with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his 
nomination, and it continued with increasing volume and mo- 
mentum until the close of his victorious campaign : 

"Xo might nor ciTeatness in mortality 
Can censure 'scape ; backwouiiding calumny 
The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong 
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ? " 

Under it all he was calm, and strong, and confident ; never 
lost his self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty or ill- 
considered word. Indeed, nothing in his whole life is more 
remarkable or more creditable than his bearing through those 
five full months of vituperation — a prolonged agony of trial 
to a sensitive man, a constant and cruel draft upon the powers 
of moral endurance. The great mass of these unjust imputa- 
tions passed unnoticed, and with the general debris of the 
campaign fell into oblivion. But in a few instances the iron 
entered his soul, and he died with the injury unforgotten if 
not unforgiven. 

One aspect of Garfield's candidacy was unprecedented. 
Never before, in the history of partisan contests in this country, 



518 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

liad a successful Presidential candidate spoken freely on passing 
events and current issues. To attempt any thing of the kind 
seemed novel, rash, and even desperate. The older class of 
voters recalled tliu unfortunate Alabama letter, in which ]\lr. 
Clay was supposed to have signed his political death-warrant. 
They remembered also the hot-tempered effusion by which 
General Scott lost a large share of popularity before his 
nomination, and the unfortunate speeches which rapidly con- 
sumed the remainder. The younger voters had seen Mr. 
Greeley, in a series of vigorous and original addresses, prepar- 
ino- the pathway for his own defeat. Unmindful of these warn- 
ino-s, unheeding the advice of friends, Garfield spoke to large 
crowds as he journeyed to and from New York in August, to 
a great multitude in that city, to delegations and deputations 
of every kind that called at Mentor during the summer and 
autumn. With innumerable critics, watchful and eager to 
catch a phrase that might be turned into odium or ridicule, or 
a sentence that might be distorted to his own or his party's in- 
jury, Garfield did not trip or halt in any one of his seventy 
speeches. This seems all the more remarkable when it is re- 
meml3ercd that he did not write what he was to say, and yet 
spoke with such consecutiveness of thought and such precision 
of phrase as to defy the accident of misreport and the malignity 
of misrepresentation. 

In the beginning of his Presidential life Garfield's experi- 
ence did not yield him pleasure or satisfaction. The duties 
that engross so large a portion of the President's time were dis- 
tasteful to him, and were unfavorably contrasted with his legis- 
lative work. "I have been dealing all these years with ideas," 
lie impatiently exclaimed one day, " and here I am dealing only 
with persons ! I liave been heretofore treating of the funda- . 
mental principles of government, and here I am considering all 
day whether A or B shall be appointed to this or that office." 
He was earnestly seeking some practical way of correcting the 
evils arising from the distribution of overgrown and unwieldy 
patronage — evils always appreciated and often discussed by 
him, but whose magnitude had been more deeply impressed 
upon his mind since his accession to the Presidency. Had he 
lived, a comprehensive improvement in the mode of appoint- 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 519 

ment and in the tenure of office would have been proposed by 
him, and, with the aid of Congress, no doubt perfected. 

But, wliile many of the executive duties were not grateful 
to him, he was assiduous and conscientious in their discharge. 
From tlie very outset he exhibited administrative talent of a 
high order. He grasped the helm of office with the hand of 
a master. Indeed, he constantly surprised many who were 
intimately associated with him in the (xovernment, and espe- 
cially those who had feared that he might be lacking in the 
executive facult3^ His disposition of business was orderly 
and rapid. His power of analysis, and his skill in classifica- 
tion, enabled him to dispatch a mass of detail with promptness 
and ease. His Cabinet meetings were admirably conducted. 
His clear presentation of official subjects, his well-considered 
suggestion of topics for discussion, his quick decision when all 
had been heard, combined to show a thoroughness of mental 
training as rare as his natural ability and his facile adaptation 
to a new and enlarged field of labor. 

With perfect comprehension of all the inheritances of the 
war, with a cool calculation of the obstacles in his way, im- 
pelled always by a generous enthusiasm, he conceived that 
much might be done by his Administration towards restoring 
harmony between the different sections of the Union. He was 
anxious to go South and speak to the people. As early as 
April he had ineffectually endeavored to arrange for a trip 
to Nashville, whither he had been cordially invited, and he 
was again disappointed a few weeks later to find that he could 
not go to South Carolina to attend the centennial celebration 
of the victory of the Cowpens. But for the autumn he defi- 
nitely counted on being present at three memorable assemblies 
in the South ; the celebration at Yorktown, the opening of 
the Cotton Exposition at Atlanta, and the meeting of the 
Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga. He was already 
turning over in his mind his address for each occasion, and 
the three taken together, he said to a friend, gave him the ex- 
act scope and verge which he needed. At Yorktown he would 
li^ve before him the associations of a hundred years that bound 
the South and the North in the sacred memory of a common 
danger and a common victory. At Atlanta he would present 



520 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

tlie material interests and the industrial development which 
appealed to the thrift and independence of every household, 
and which should unite the two sections by the instinct of self- 
interest and self-defense. At Chattanooga he would revive 
memories of the war only to show that after all its disaster and 
suffering, the country was stronger and greater, the Union ren- 
dered indissoluble, and the future, through the agony and blood 
of one generation, made brighter and better for all. 

Ilis ambition for the success of his Administration was high. 
With strong caution and conservatism in his nature, he was 
in no danger of attempting rash experiments or of resorting 
to the empiricism of statesmanship. But he believed that 
renewed and closer attention should be given to questions 
affecting the material interests and commercial prospects of fifty 
millions of people. He believed that our continental relations 
extensive and undeveloped as they are, involved responsibility, 
and could be cultivated into profitable friendship or be aban- 
doned to harmful indifference or lasting enmity. He believed 
with equal confidence that an essential forerunner to a new era 
of National progress must be a feeling of contentment in every 
section of the Union, and a generous belief that the benefits 
and burdens of government would be common to all. Himself 
a conspicuous illustration of what ability and ambition may do 
under Republican institutions, he loved his country with a pas- 
sion of patriotic devotion, and every waking thought was given 
to her advancement. He was an American in all his aspira- 
tions, and he looked to the destiny and influence of the United 
States with the philosophic composure of Jefferson and the 
demonstrative confidence of John Adams. 

The political events which disturbed the President's serenity 
for many weeks before that fateful day in July form an impor- 
tant chapter in his career, and, in his own judgment, involved 
questions of principle and of right which are vital to the 
constitutional administration of the Federal Government. It 
would be out of place here to speak the language of contro- 
versy ; but the events referred to, however they may- continue 
to be a source of contention with others, have become, so 
far as the name of Garfield is involved, as much a matter of 
history as his heroism at Chickamauga or his illustrious service 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 621 

in the House. Detail is not needful, and personal antagonism 
shall not be rekindled b}^ any word uttered today. The 
motives of those opposing him are not now to be adversely in- 
terpreted or their course harshly characterized. But of the 
dead President this is to be^ said, and said because his own 
speech is forever silenced and he can be no more heard except 
through the fidelity and love of surviving friends : — from the 
beginning to the end of the controversy he so much deplored, 
the President was never for one moment actuated by any motive 
of gain to himself or of loss to others. Least of all men did 
he harbor revenge, rarely did he even show resentment, and 
malice was not in his nature. He was congenially employed 
only in the exchange of good offices and the doing of kindly 
deeds. 

There was not an hour, from the beginning of the trouble 
till the fatal shot entered his body, when the President would 
not gladly for the sake of restoring harmony, have retraced any 
step he had taken, if such retracing had merely involved conse- 
quences personal to himself. The pride of consistency, or any 
supposed sense of humiliation that might result from surrender- 
ing his position, had not a feather's weight with him. No man 
was ever less subject to such influences from within or from 
without. But after most anxious deliberation and the coolest 
survey of all the circumstances, he solemnly believed that the 
true prerogatives of the Executive were involved in the issue 
which had been raised, and that he would be unfaithful to his 
supreme obligation if he failed to maintain, in all their vigor, 
the constitutional rights and dignities of his great office. He 
believed this in all the convictions of conscience when in sound 
and vigorous health, and he believed it in his suffering and 
prostration in the last conscious thought which his wearied 
]nind bestowed on the transitory struggles of life. 

More than this need not be said. Less than this could not 
be said. Justice to the dead, the highest obligation that de- 
volves upon the living, demands the declaration that hi all the 
bearings of the subject, actual or possible, the President was 
content in his mind, justified in his conscience, immovable in 
his conclusions. 

The religious element iu Garfield's character was deep and 



522 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

earnest. In his early youth he espoused the faith of the Disci- 
ples, a sect of the great Baptist Communion. But the broaden- 
ing tendenc}' of his mind and his spirit of inquiry were early 
apparent, and carried him bej-ond the dogmas of sect and the 
restraints of association. In selecting his college he rejected 
Bethany, though presided over by Alexander Campl:)ell, tlie 
greatest preacher of his church. His reasons were character- 
istic : first, that Bethany leaned too heavily towards slavery ; 
and, second, that being himself a Disciple and the son of 
Disciple parents, he had little acquaintance with people of 
other beliefs, and he thought it would make him more liberal, 
quoting his own words, both in his religious and general views, 
to go into a new circle and be under new influences. 

The liberal tendency which he anticipated as the result of 
wider culture was fully realized. He was emancipated from 
mere sectarian belief, and with eager interest pushed his inves- 
tigations in the direction of modern progressive thought. He 
followed with quickening step in the paths of exploration and 
speculation fearlessly trodden by Darwin, by Huxley, by Tyn- 
dall, and by other eminent scientists. His own church, bind- 
ing its disciples by no formulated creed, but accepting the Old 
and New Testaments as the word of God, with unl)iased liber- 
ality of private interpretation, favored, if it did not stimulate, 
the spirit of investigation. 

But however high Garfield reasoned of "fixed fate, free will, 
foreknowledge absolute," he was never separated from the 
Church of the Disciples in his affections and in his associations. 
For him it held the Ark of the Covenant. To him it was the 
gate of Heaven. The world of religious belief is full of sole- 
cisms and contradictions. A philosophic observer declares that 
men by the thousand will die in defense of a creed whose doc- 
trines they do not comprehend and whose tenets they habitu- 
ally violate. It is equally true that men by the thousand will 
cling to church organizations with instinctive and undying 
fidelity, when their belief in maturer years is radically differ- 
ent from that Avhich inspired them as neophytes. 

But after this range of speculation, and this latitude of 
doubt, Garfield came back always witli freshness and delight 
to the simpler instincts of religious faith, which, earliest im- 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 523 

planted, longest survive. Not many weeks before his assassina- 
tion, walking on the banks of the Potomac with a friend, and 
conversing on those topics of personal religion, concerning 
which noble natures have an unconquerable reserve, he said that 
he found the Lord's Trayer and the simple petitions learned in 
infancy infinitely restful to him, not merely in their stated 
repetition, but in their casual and frequent recall as he Avent 
about the daily duties of life. Certain texts of Scripture had 
a strong hold on his memory and his heart. He heard, while 
in Edinburgh some years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher 
who prefaced his sermon with reading the eighth chapter of 
the Epistle to the Romans, which book had been the subject 
of careful study with Garfield during all his religious life. 
He was greatly impressed by the elocution of the preacher and 
declared that it had imparted a new and deeper meaning to the 
majestic utterance of St. Paul. He referred often hi after 
years to that memorable service, and dwelt with exaltation of 
feeling upon the radiant promise and the assured hope with 
which the great apostle of the Gentiles was "persuaded that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor pow- 
ers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor 
depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from 
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

The crowning characteristic of General Garfield's religious 
opinions, as, indeed, of all his opinions, was his liberalityr Li 
all things he had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He 
respected in others the qualities which he possessed himself— 
sincerity of conviction and frankness of expression. With him 
the inquiry was not so much what a man believes, but does he 
believe it? The lines of his friendship and his confidence en- 
circled men of every creed, and men of no creed, and to the 
end of his life, on his ever-lengthening list of friends, Avere 
to be found the names of a pious Catholic priest and of an 
honest-minded and generous-hearted free-thinker. 

On the morning of Saturday, July 2, the President was a 
contented and happy man — not in an ordinary degree, but 
joyfully, almost boyishly happy. On his way to the. railroad 
station, to which he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of 
the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and 



524 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

a keen anticipation of pleasure, liis talk was all in the grateful 
and gratulatory vein, lie felt that after four months of trial 
his Administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in 
popular favor, and destined to grow stronger ; that grave diffi- 
culties confronting him at his inauguration had been safely 
passed ; that trouble lay behind him and not before him ; that 
he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering 
from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times 
almost unnerved him ; that he was going to his Alma Mater to 
renew the most cherished associations of his young manhood, 
and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest 
had followed every step of his upward progress from the day 
he entered upon his college Course until he had attained the 
loftiest elevation in the gift of his countrymen. 

Surely if happiness can ever come from the honors or tri- 
umphs of this world, on that quiet July morning Garfield may 
Avell have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted 
him ; no premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible 
fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, 
strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before 
him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to 
weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave. 

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no 
cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the 
red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this 
world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into 
the visible presence of death — and he did not quail. Not 
alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed 
he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but 
through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that 
was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and 
calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and 
ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell — what bril- 
liant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sunder- 
ing of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending 
of sweet household ties ! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, 
a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, 
wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears ; the 
wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his ; the little boys 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 525 

not yet emerged from childlioocrs day of frolic ; the fair young 
daughter ; the sturdy sons just springing into closest compan- 
ionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding a father's 
love and care ; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to 
meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great darkness ! 
And his soul was not shaken. 

His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and 
universal sympathy. jNIasterful in his mortal weakness, he 
became the centre of a nation's love ; he was enshrined in the 
prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy 
could not share with him his suffering. He trod the Avine-press 
alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With "unfailing 
tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of 
the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. In simple 
resignation he bowed to the divine decree. 

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. 
The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome 
hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison 
walls, from its oppressive, stilling air, from its homelessness and 
its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people 
bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to 
live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its lieaving 
billows, within sound, of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered 
face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wist- 
fully upon the ocean's changing wonders ; on its far sails, whit- 
ening in the morning light ; on its restless waves, rolling shore- 
ward to break and die beneath the noonday sun ; on the red 
clouds of evening, arching hnv to the horizon ; on the serene 
and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying 
eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting 
soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the reced- 
ing world he heard the great.waves breaking on a farther shore, 
and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal 
morn in cr. 



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